Upgrade StorageUnchecking "sync automatically" not saved
I don't know if I'm the first this has happened to. I finished writing a paper several months ago, and wanted to free up space on my zotero account by removing the references for that paper. But I wanted to still have them on hand for future reference. So I backed up my entire Zotero profile folder to an external hard drive before deleting the items from my library.
Recently, when I decided I wanted to look at them again, I opened the Preferences, unchecked "Sync Automatically" and then on the Advanced tab, changed my data directory to the folder on my external drive. A window popped up saying, "Zotero for Firefox must be restarted for the change to take effect." So I clicked the button "Restart Now" which was the only option.
When Firefox restarted, I saw all of my old references. Great! A moment later, they disappeared, and I saw that a sync was taking place. Even though I had unchecked ""sync automatically," this setting had not been saved.
I guess that the setting was not saved because I never properly closed the Preferences window? Can the developers can please fix this bug?
Right now, I'm dismayed at having permanently lost about 100 references.I don't suppose there is any way to recover these? The zotero.sqlite file in my backup folder now has a smaller file size and a brand new "modified date", and about 100 of the folders in the storage directory are gone (I looked, they're not in the Trash).
Recently, when I decided I wanted to look at them again, I opened the Preferences, unchecked "Sync Automatically" and then on the Advanced tab, changed my data directory to the folder on my external drive. A window popped up saying, "Zotero for Firefox must be restarted for the change to take effect." So I clicked the button "Restart Now" which was the only option.
When Firefox restarted, I saw all of my old references. Great! A moment later, they disappeared, and I saw that a sync was taking place. Even though I had unchecked ""sync automatically," this setting had not been saved.
I guess that the setting was not saved because I never properly closed the Preferences window? Can the developers can please fix this bug?
Right now, I'm dismayed at having permanently lost about 100 references.I don't suppose there is any way to recover these? The zotero.sqlite file in my backup folder now has a smaller file size and a brand new "modified date", and about 100 of the folders in the storage directory are gone (I looked, they're not in the Trash).
If you don't have another backup, I'm afraid you're out of luck, at least with the attached files. There could be an automatic backup of the database in the data directory, but that would get you only the metadata.
It's not really a backup if you access it directly...
After taking a deep breath, I realized that there were files called sqlite.bak. So yes, I was able to view the data for items in my library, but the attached PDFs and html snapshots seem to be permanently gone. That's a bummer, because I paid for some of them.
Your final comment implies that I am going about the backup wrong. I guess I should have had two backups? I'm fairly tech literate, and followed all the instructions. How else should I have gone back and accessed my backup? Zotero does not allow you to access "read only" data on a CD or DVD. I tried that once and got the error message, "The Zotero database cannot be opened. Make sure you have read and write permissions for all files in the Zotero data directory."
Thanks again for the quick reply. I love Zotero and am somewhat of an evangelist at my office. I've seen a few messages on the boards asking for a more straightforward way to backup library data, and I'd like to second that.
A proper solution would be the ability to not sync certain collections or libraries, but that's not possible currently.
I was able to recover a lot of my deleted information. First, I renamed one of the .bak files and restarted Zotero.(First I changed my login information in the preferences so an inadvertent sync would be impossible.) That got me all of my bibliographic metadata back in zotero, but without any files.
Then I used a little free program called Restoration and searched for deleted files with "PDF" in them. I think I got all of them. They're not linked to the articles anymore, because it doesn't restore them to the same folder location. Luckily, I frequently used the "Rename file from parent metadata" option, so my files have really useful names that are easily identifiable. There are a few that remain inscrutable, but it's easy enough to open the file and look at it.
Cheers,
Matt