Upgrade StorageSurvivability of my library, tags, notes, machine to machine, OS to OS?
Newbie here. I'm setting up Zotero on my machine with the goal of renaming, tagging, taking notes, and integration with Obsidian notes, in relation to my local collection of PDF papers. I'm not doing any scientific work, so I'm not concerned about citing et cetera, just looking for personal knowledge management.
On my windows laptop, on an external drive, I have folder of papers "G:\Text\Papers_Library" . My first attempt of importing them involved copying the pdfs into folders like "C:\Users\Theuser\Zotero\storage\2AYQA4HJ" which I didn't like.
Then I threw everything out and started over with "link to file". Now I still get directories as above, but they don't contain the pdfs.
The main consideration I care about is what will happen when I switch to a new laptop, which might be Linux instead of Windows, or might be dual boot. (I'm not planning on using the cloud based sync option)
I've seen the setting for the "base directory" and have a vague notion that it will be important when migrating to a new machine, but I don't understand exactly what it does.
On a Linux machine, the drive would be mounted somewhere, for instance "/media/Text/Papers_Library".
I have another folder with PDF books "G:\Text\Books_Library" which I may start importing into Zotero.
So would it be the right thing to set "base directory" to "G:\Text", aiming to seamlessly carry the library to potentially a different OS in the future?
The other thing I'm worrying about is what will happen to the folders like "C:\Users\Theuser\Zotero\storage\2AYQA4HJ" when migrating to a new machine or OS?
Having set up the integration between Zotero and Obsidian and having created references/links from Obsidian, I get reference keys like "desktopURI" : "zotero://select/library/items/AKUTLENP"
i.e. pointing to those folders with names like AKUTLENP. If I create tags or notes in Zotero, I think they end up in these folders.
So if I start linking to those folders now, will I be able to transport that library structure to a new machine if the OS is different, or will those links all become worthless?
On my windows laptop, on an external drive, I have folder of papers "G:\Text\Papers_Library" . My first attempt of importing them involved copying the pdfs into folders like "C:\Users\Theuser\Zotero\storage\2AYQA4HJ" which I didn't like.
Then I threw everything out and started over with "link to file". Now I still get directories as above, but they don't contain the pdfs.
The main consideration I care about is what will happen when I switch to a new laptop, which might be Linux instead of Windows, or might be dual boot. (I'm not planning on using the cloud based sync option)
I've seen the setting for the "base directory" and have a vague notion that it will be important when migrating to a new machine, but I don't understand exactly what it does.
On a Linux machine, the drive would be mounted somewhere, for instance "/media/Text/Papers_Library".
I have another folder with PDF books "G:\Text\Books_Library" which I may start importing into Zotero.
So would it be the right thing to set "base directory" to "G:\Text", aiming to seamlessly carry the library to potentially a different OS in the future?
The other thing I'm worrying about is what will happen to the folders like "C:\Users\Theuser\Zotero\storage\2AYQA4HJ" when migrating to a new machine or OS?
Having set up the integration between Zotero and Obsidian and having created references/links from Obsidian, I get reference keys like "desktopURI" : "zotero://select/library/items/AKUTLENP"
i.e. pointing to those folders with names like AKUTLENP. If I create tags or notes in Zotero, I think they end up in these folders.
So if I start linking to those folders now, will I be able to transport that library structure to a new machine if the OS is different, or will those links all become worthless?
If you use linked files, that's what the linked attachment base directory setting is for.