Changing Data Directory Location

I recently created a private Zotero group for a committee I am an assistant on and am getting ready to invite committee members to the group. Before I do, though, I am wondering about changing the date directory location to a place on a shared Y drive that my institution regularly backs up (as opposed to the default Firefox profile directory).

Another reason (other than the auto backups) I see for doing this would be to fluidly facilitate the process of transitioning management (and eventually ownership) of the Group to future administrators who may or may not be using the computer I currently do (but would certainly be using a different Firefox profile).

So, my question is basically this: are there risks to moving the group to another location (said institutional shared drive...not physically portable)? Am I overthinking this or are there reasons I have not thought of for NOT moving the directory location? I think moving sooner than later makes sense, but am nervous about losing even what I have already created. I plan to backup everything before making any changes, but look forward to any input other experienced Zotero users may have. I am running Zotero 2.0.2.

I have read the Zotero documentation on data storage and want to be sure that all of my tags, associations between papers, notes, folder arrangements (subfolders, etc.) will remain intact when I copy them over...and I am still unclear on exactly what files and folders I need to copy over once I have repointed my data directory location in Zotero's preferences.

Thanks for the help!
  • edited April 29, 2010
    I should also mention that most of the committee members do not have access to this institutional drive (and I must use tsweb to do so from home)...it seems this would not matter but I am not the most tech savvy individual so thought I should mention it.
  • Generally that's no problem.
    What you absolutely shouldn't do with the shared drive is to access it from various locations:
    If you have two (or more) machines with FF/Zotero pointing to the same directory, anytime both have FF open you're at a serious risk of corrupting your database - so don't do that, but it doesn't sound like that's what you plan anyway.

    Your data directory has all your information, so copying that will get everything, including tags, collection structure etc.
    Technically I think all you need is the zotero.sqlite file as well as the folder named storage, but I'd recommend you just copy the entire content of the data directory (remember to do the copying when Firefox is closed).
  • Thank you! I just completed the transfer and everything looks good :)
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