Question about Local storage & Dropbox

[mpc91]

hi there

I only have 128gb hdd so I am quickly running out of room,

when I go into about this Mac / storage / manage, it tells me that I have certain files in documents, then when I click on documents the files are not showing the files are actually located on my dropbox folder, when I deleted the files that where supposedly in documents folder they were deleted from dropbox.

my question is why are they showing in documents when I have the files in the cloud with dropbox?

also I dated my iPhone / iPad backups using iTunes yet when I go intuit the manage storage utility it says the backups are still there?

any help would be much appreciated.

 

[csurfr]

When you copy files to dropbox it's essentially keeping those files locally as well. When you tell dropbox to delete something it should have a popup asking if you want to delete them locally or everywhere. I'm assuming that "locally" will just remove them from your machine leaving them on dropbox untouched. Is that not what is happening for you?

As far as the backups goes you should be able to remove them with storage utility / iTunes. Maybe it just hadn't had time to refresh the numbers when you checked?

 

[posguy99]

my question is why are they showing in documents when I have the files in the cloud with dropbox?

If you want the files to only be in Dropbox, use Selective Sync, so that the folder they're in doesn't come down to the local machine.

 

[csurfr]

If you want the files to only be in Dropbox, use Selective Sync, so that the folder they're in doesn't come down to the local machine.

Yeah, that's what it's called. Couldn't remember the name of it.

 

[BigMcGuire]

hi there

I only have 128gb hdd so I am quickly running out of room,

when I go into about this Mac / storage / manage, it tells me that I have certain files in documents, then when I click on documents the files are not showing the files are actually located on my dropbox folder, when I deleted the files that where supposedly in documents folder they were deleted from dropbox.

my question is why are they showing in documents when I have the files in the cloud with dropbox?

also I dated my iPhone / iPad backups using iTunes yet when I go intuit the manage storage utility it says the backups are still there?

any help would be much appreciated.

Go to cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync -- This is where iTunes stores backups. I use a symbolic link to move this folder to an external drive as to not take up gigs of space on my internal drive. http://www.iclarified.com/28429/how-to-change-the-location-of-your-itunes-iphone-backups-mac - Be aware, you can only backup when your external drive is connected. Not for novice users.

OmniDiskSweeper gives good visual representations of where data lies on your disk from largest to smallest files. Really useful for finding where most of the data hogs exist. Be careful when deleting stuff you aren't sure to delete.

Users above are correct, I have backed up my photos to Dropbox, but I don't want all those gigs of photos on my Mac drive, so I turn off syncing that folder to my Mac via Dropbox's Selective Sync.

 

[aevan]

hi there

I only have 128gb hdd so I am quickly running out of room,

when I go into about this Mac / storage / manage, it tells me that I have certain files in documents, then when I click on documents the files are not showing the files are actually located on my dropbox folder, when I deleted the files that where supposedly in documents folder they were deleted from dropbox.

my question is why are they showing in documents when I have the files in the cloud with dropbox?

also I dated my iPhone / iPad backups using iTunes yet when I go intuit the manage storage utility it says the backups are still there?

any help would be much appreciated.

As others have said, the way to keep space locally and have stuff you don't currently need on Dropbox is Selective Sync. Make a folder in Dropbox named "cloud storage" (or whatever you want), then choose not to sync this folder locally.

Then, when you want to move something there, use the Dropbox web interface to upload there directly, or if the files are big, first move them to the root of your Dropbox folder, wait for them to upload and then use the web interface to move them to "cloud storage" folder.

You can do this with any other cloud service too, with the exception of iCloud Drive, which does not allow you to selectively sync, but has some Apple algorithm which decides which files to keep locally and wich to keep only in the cloud to help save space.