Any way to Petition Dropbox to figure out a way to Continue to use External Drives?

[Doug183]

Dropbox to me is fundamentally changing the way it works and I am looking to get the word out to see if Dropbox can "fix it".

The primary issue is for the new Dropbox for macOS will no longer operate on an external hard drive. Meaning that you can buy 2TB's of Dropbox storage, but that means to upload it to Dropbox, that data will need to be copied to your internal hard drive at some point which means the user will later need to manage that. As an example:

1) copy/move a file to the internal dropbox folder.

2) Allow it to upload.

3) Make the file on-line. (meaning its uploaded to the cloud, so the local copy can be deleted)

4) To free up internal hard drive space, that file needs to be Deleted/moved manually.



That is a lot of management steps. Am I the only one who uses dropbox as a big useful online drive? My other computers only touch the online data occasionally so selective sync and "online" work great for them, but the original computer that generates all my data... needs to have a 4TB internal hard drive. And of course its an i7 Macmini that can't be upgraded.

FYI I put large video files up on Dropbox to deliver to clients.



I love Dropbox and used it since 2009 and being using payed version as my company got bigger. I don't want t jump ship, but I don't see an alternative.

 

[kitKAC]

This change is a limitation of the new filesharing API, seems like the only way around it is to reverse your setup. Make your external drive the boot drive, then you'll be able to store all of your Dropbox files on it.

 

[gilby101]

I don't want t jump ship, but I don't see an alternative.

I understand the new Google Drive gives you the choice of new or old style sync.

 

[iMattPro]

Why is MacRumors not talking about this!?!?!

 

[maflynn]

Why is MacRumors not talking about this!?!?!

There's a number of threads already discussing how Apple changed the APIs impacting filesharing.

AFAIK, this isn't a shortcoming for dropbox, but how apple has defined the APIs. OneDrive was also impacted negatively.

 

[Darth.Titan]

Strange, my Dropbox folder works just fine on an external…

 

[HDFan]

understand the new Google Drive gives you the choice of new or old style sync.

Can you provide a reference? Had to give up on Google drive since it completely filled my boot disk while uploading external drive files.

 

[gilby101]

Can you provide a reference? Had to give up on Google drive since it completely filled my boot disk while uploading external drive files.

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/10838124?hl=en talks about the difference between streaming and mirroring.

 

[Solve4X]

"Storing your Dropbox folder on an external drive is no longer supported by macOS. Your Dropbox folder will be moved to ~/Library/CloudStorage."
Source: https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected-changes

I have 3 Macs (M2 MBA, MacMini i7, MacMini M1). The Minis have Dropbox each with 2.4Tb >500K files on an external 4Tb SSD drives, all files offline. So far Dropbox is still on the external drives. Internal drives are 2Tb so there is not enough space for the move.

Does anyone know *when* and *what triggers* the transfer to CloudStorage?

Any workaround, for example using symlinks to keep Dropbox files on an external drive?

 

[gilby101]

Any workaround, for example using symlinks to keep Dropbox files on an external drive?

Symlinks, etc. will not work.

The workaround I use with OneDrive is to not use the OneDrive app. Instead I use GoodSync https://www.goodsync.com/ to synchronise between OneDrive and a folder on an external drive. You could do the same thing with Dropbox. You would loose the very fast sync of Dropbox, but otherwise I don't see much lost functionality.

Edit: Read https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Sto...ternal-disk-support-for-Mac-users/td-p/659876 which indicates:
1) Dropbox is working on a solution for your scenario;
2) Those with Dropbox on large external drives will not be migrated.
But, I have not knowledge of the accuracy of that.

 

[Ru_C]

Hi all, I'm in a situation where I have to buy a new Mac (old one died, insurance claim), & rely heavily on Dropbox for day-to-day audio/video workflow with a 3TB account shared between a bunch of Macs .

As of this date, if I install dropbox on a new Mac, can I *still* place it on an external 4TB SSD (permanently attached to the Mac of course)?

As I understand it, for those of us currently using external storage, it will still work *for now*...however at any point is likely to just stop working, causing huge disruption.

However for those of us forced to use a new machine, Dropbox admins are being suitably vague in language on the forum.

Cheers