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adamschoales's avatar
adamschoales
Helpful | Level 5
6 years ago

"Smart" sync keeps downloading Online Only Files

I am growing increasingly frustrated with this so called "smart sync" feature Dropbox has recently introduced (or rather forced upon me). I have a number of files I've brought over to Dropbox using...
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adamschoales's avatar
adamschoales
Helpful | Level 5
6 years ago

No third party files are accessing these. These are all files that I recently moved/copied to Dropbox from other locations, and set to "online only". Never even opened once moved to dropbox. And yet they still kept re-syncing. 

This is especially problematic for the files that are quite large in size. I have home movies that are several gigabytes that I simply want to store on Dropbox as an offsite backup, but when they keep downloading back to my machine not only are they taking up several gigabytes on my machine but wasting several gigabytes of bandwidth to constantly re-download.

The Dropbox app is vr. 86.4.146 and I'm runnning Mac OS 10.14.6.

 

 

Fiona's avatar
Fiona
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
6 years ago

Please add a screenshot showing the space the Dropbox files take up from your computer at the time. 

As for your syncing, I located a ticket you have with our support and took over to take a look at device specific details. You already have my response there adamschoales. 

Feel free to get back to this thread and post the explanation I provided you there. 

Thank you! 

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

    As mentioned in my email:

    You flagged that you saw that the default Smart Sync setting you have for this device is "Local". Not sure where you’re seeing the default sync is “local” because here’s a screenshot from the app on my end where it clearly says online only. If you’re seeing something saying it’s set to Local that is perhaps part of the issue - somewhere in the system Dropbox thinks that’s what I want even though on my end I’m telling it otherwise.
     
    Also, as mentioned, third party apps are not accessing the files. I don’t have any anti-virus software running, and while I do have some backup apps, they all have the Dropbox folder excluded from the backup.
     
    So really not sure what’s going on here. Like I mentioned, the only way to get things to work properly seems to use the old “Selective sync” method, which completely defeats the purpose of Smart Sync to begin with.
    • Fiona's avatar
      Fiona
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
      6 years ago

      Thank you for updating the thread with additional information. 

      I would like us to continue responding to the email, if this is OK with you, so I can have all your responses there, in case I need to escalate. 

      You are of course welcome to post back here, when we get this resolved for you. 

      Thank you for your understanding and patience. 

      • busboys45's avatar
        busboys45
        Helpful | Level 5
        6 years ago

        I am having the exact same issue.  Almost every day I turn on my laptop to discover files I have sent online are now local again.  What is the solution?

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