Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨‍💻? Find out how to check here.

Forum Discussion

Shawn B.14's avatar
Shawn B.14
Helpful | Level 6
6 years ago

Dropbox is stuck syncing after an update, what can I do?

I have the "Dropbox Plus" subscription and I run the client on 4 computers.

 

Yesterday (Monday, 13-Jan-2020) I signed onto my desktop (which is always on) and has a full local sync of my dropbox that a number of new files added Saturday had big red Xs on them -- JPEGs I had scanned Saturday and which were in sync to my laptop on Sunday morning.

I checked my other workstation (also always on) and Dropbox wasn't even running.  I launched it, and it pretty immediately ran a "one time update".   Once this completed, it appeared to go into a full-on sync mode, indexing thousands of files and downloading thousands more (my total dropbox footprint is ~17k files, 600 GB of data).  This has been running for 24 hours without making any apparent progress, despite the drive being materially in sync with my first workstation (using BeyondCompare to check).  Plus not enough system activity to indicate any actual indexing or download was taking place.

I paused workstation 2, uninstalled dropbox on workstation 1 and reinstalled it.  Just prior to this, workstation 1 was "stuck" uploading 2 files and downloading 7 files, which it had been on since last night.

Workstation 1 now shows "indexing" for around 8k files and "downloading" for 9k files.  Trouble is, Resource Monitor doesn't show disk activity or network activity for that kind of activity.

What's going on?  I was perfectly in sync as of Saturday morning and over the last 24 hours it's gotten bad.

Oddly, my laptop ("laptop 1") is apparently fine, showing more or less normal sync status as far as I can tell (and is on build 88.4.172).

desktop
Download
Dropbox Plus
sync
windows

165 Replies

Replies have been turned off for this discussion
Show More
  • Joshua5's avatar
    Joshua5
    New member | Level 2
    6 years ago

    One more person who have same problem. I worry about data loss.

  • Matt F.16's avatar
    Matt F.16
    Collaborator | Level 9
    6 years ago

    Same problem here on a headless Ubuntu 18.04 server.. I have 1 TB of dropbox data and since the most recent update the Dropbox client eats 100% CPU (one core) and never finishes syncing no matter what I try.

  • Exis's avatar
    Exis
    Helpful | Level 5
    6 years ago

    Everyone, as Akos said just leave it running even if it looks stuck in 'Syncing...'. Eventually it will be up to date.

  • CAGR's avatar
    CAGR
    Helpful | Level 6
    6 years ago

    C´mon guys @Dropbox ... What is going on? The thing is stuck at "Syncing" ... THIS IS A BUG, please do kindly fix it.

    Thanks in advance

  • hdmf's avatar
    hdmf
    Helpful | Level 6
    6 years ago

    Windows 10 - Same problem here for the last few days.
    tried every suggested fix but nothing stops it 'Syncing...' - ridiculous. 

     

  • CAGR's avatar
    CAGR
    Helpful | Level 6
    6 years ago

    First Step - Went from Pro to Plus and if tomorrow nothing works will just get out of here. What a plonkers !!!!

  • MrAnderson's avatar
    MrAnderson
    Helpful | Level 5
    6 years ago

    For about two days now several of my systems have been stuck at "Syncing..." That includes one desktop running Windows 10 and two servers running Windows Server 2012 R2.

    I have two other Windows Server 2012 R2's that are not having this issue and one MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina also without this problem. All are on the same dropbox version which is v88.4.172

    So far I've tried restarting the affected computers and obviously restarting Dropbox. I've tried fixing hardlinks and folder permissions. Nothing is working and the three systems I noted above are still after two days stuck at "Syncing..." with no other information available to me.

    I've looked at the disk access of the dropbox processes and they don't seem to be doing much. Barely reading from the C drive at a few bytes. Seems like it has stalled but why? - No idea.

    Honestly I'm very angry about this, I'm a paying customer and right now this is unusable. I want a refund for all the time I'm losing.

  • Matt F.16's avatar
    Matt F.16
    Collaborator | Level 9
    6 years ago

    I've been a loyal dropbox customer for many years.. but this is ridiculus.. by far the worst upgrade we've seen. 

  • anonymous's avatar
    anonymous
    6 years ago

    Agree. It took 2 days, 2 days..2 weeks ago had similar problems, at least they fixed it then. Now...nothing. support chat just gave me the general bla-bla. I pay 20 dollars each month, this is really becoming ridiculous. Dropbox used to be such a reliable service. Now, I don't trust them anymore.

    I'm currently looking around for other providers and plans. Any suggestions? GDrive, OneDrive?

  • MrAnderson's avatar
    MrAnderson
    Helpful | Level 5
    6 years ago

    I was able to fix two of my systems by completely uninstalling Dropbox and then reinstalling it. This update is clearly messed up somewhere. After waiting 2 days for it to "work" reinstalling it made it work within 30 minutes on both systems.

    Come on Dropbox... get it together.

About View, download, and export

Node avatar for View, download, and export
Need support with viewing, downloading, and exporting files and folders from your Dropbox account? Find help from the Dropbox Community.

The Dropbox Community team is active from Monday to Friday. We try to respond to you as soon as we can, usually within 2 hours.

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X, Facebook or Instagram.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!