sqlite file lost

nitesh
I lost my firefox profile folder in a crash (and a huge list of references), and was only able to recover the subfolders in zotero/storage/.
Is there any way to rebuild the sqlite file (from freshly installed zotero) to read the existing data? Please help.
Edit: I am asking this for a friend. For some reason she was still using the older version of zotero, and so does not have any backup online.
  • adamsmith
    sorry - no.
    For pdfs you can use the retrieve metadata function, but that's all there is - the sqlite has all the relevant data. There is really no back-up at all? And you never synced online?
  • nitesh
    Thats right. My friend was using the older version, and had no backup. Neither online nor local. She is almost at the end of her thesis and is pretty lost right now...

    I was wondering if there was any way to "read" the files from the /storage sub-folders into the new sqlite file.
  • adamsmith
    as I said - unfortunately no, there isn't - this has come up on occasion and Dan (the lead developer) has confirmed that there is no way to do that, so - sorry as I am - take that as a definite no.
    If most files have pdfs attached what I'd recommend is doing a search for .pdf in the Zotero storage folder - the search results will then contain all pdf files in your Zotero - drag these into your fresh install of Zotero in batches of about 20.
    Once you're done, select batches of again about 20, right-click and select "Retrieve Metadata from pdf". You'll need to use the "new" (i.e. 2.0.3) version of Zotero for that.

    All items without pdf attachments are irretrievably gone.

    Also, all citations in her thesis will have to be re-inserted.
  • nitesh
    Thanks for the reply adam.

    I was in fact curious if zotero would be able to continue the citations with either recovered or newly saved references. I will try making use of the pdf files like you said, although I do not know if any attachments were made. I am afraid she was using the default settings which do not include attaching pdf files (as far as I remember).

    Just curious- not being able to make any use of the files in /storage- is that a limitation of zotero specifically, or is it more a limitation of how sqlite works? (I have no idea about the workings of either zotero or sqlite/sql).
  • adamsmith
    the default is actually to include pdfs I'm pretty sure, so that might still work.
    The citations will definitely have to be re-inserted - although that is faster than you think.

    Not making any use of the files in storage - that's how databases in general work - think of sqlite as a more capable and powerful Excel spreadsheets where authors are in one column, titles in the next etc. One column contains a link to stored files, which are stored on any folder in the file system. Now, if you lose that spreadsheet, how would you - even in theory - get the other columns (author, title etc.) from the formerly linked files? They're simply not there. So that has nothing to do with SQL or Zotero. This would be the same with any bibliographic or database software.

    Note also that this scenario is really rare - I said "on occasion" - those have been 2 or 3 case ever on this forum. The case that someone loses the Zotero folder, but not the zotero/storage folder is quite unusual - I'm still not sure how that would have happened in this case.
  • nitesh
    edited August 1, 2010
    Thanks for the explanation.

    In "this case" the files were lost/deleted from the hard disk, and when recovering the lost files (using PC Inspector file recovery) although I was able to recover most of the /storage sub-folders, I did not find the lost sqlite file. Unfortunately, my friend did not let me know right away after losing the files and continued to use the PC for some days. So by the time I tried to recover the data, some of it was irretrievable.

    Thanks for the help once again.
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