Moving PDFs to external drive - Linked Attachment Base Directory?

blogfar · July 17, 2023

Hi,

I have quite a lot of PDFs saved in my PC linked to my Zotero and I would love to move some of them to my external drive without losing the links... I have read that I could use the Linked Attachment Base Directory, but I am not sure if I understood correctly how it works and I didn't manage to set it up correctly.

The articles in the PC are stored on this path: C:\Users\[Username]\Documents\_Zotero

On my external drive, I would store them on this path: D:\_Zotero

I set the Linked Attachment Base Directory to C:\Users\[Username]\Documents\_Zotero, however if I move the article from this directory to the external drive, the link gets broken.

Am I using the feature in a wrong way or did I set it up badly?

dstillman · July 17, 2023

https://www.zotero.org/support/preferences/advanced#linked_attachment_base_directory

adamsmith · July 17, 2023

But if you're saying you're trying to have files in two different basic locations on the same computer, there's just no way to have this work semi automatically and the base directory won't help with that -- you can manually relink them, obviously, but that's about it.

tim820 · July 18, 2023

To be clear, the Linked Attachment Base Directory setting sets where Zotero *looks* for linked files. It has no effect on where Zotero (or addons like Zotfile) *stores* linked files. But you would normally set the linked file storage location (eg in Zotfile preferences) and the LABD the same.

However you only need a LABD setting to guide Zotero where to look *if* your linked files are in a different location on different computers. If you only work on one computer, or your linked files are in the same location on each computer (eg G:\ZoteroAttachments\), then you don't need to set the LABD. However there is no harm in doing so (it just changes how linked file paths are stored the the sqlite database, but Zotero can find linked files either way). If you start with one computer/path configuration and later decide to change it, setting the LABD will change where Zotero looks for all your linked files, past and future (as long as you sync Zotero *data* across your computers).