We’re Still Here to Help (Even Over the Holidays!) - find out more here.
Forum Discussion
Sophf
2 years agoExplorer | Level 3
How can I stop copying onto my hard drive?
I tried moving files from an external drive to my computers hard drive into the Dropbox folder. The size of all these files was larger than the capacity of my hard drive. When I look at my Dropbox dir...
Nancy
Dropbox Community Moderator
2 years agoHi Sophf! Hope you don’t mind me jump in.
Since you’re on a Mac device, the Dropbox icon will appear at the top right corner of your computer (where your clock settings are showing). To see the app version of your Dropbox app, please hover over that Dropbox icon at the top.
Other than that, since you previously mentioned you were moving files from an external hard drive to Dropbox, would our external drive backup feature help with what you’re trying to do? I’m asking because, if you use it instead, it won’t affect your hard drive space, and your external drive’s files will be backed up to your web Dropbox account directly.
Sophf
2 years agoExplorer | Level 3
Thanks for the response, Nancy. Is it possible to do the external drive backup with the external drive while also having my computer’s hard drive tied to the more traditional Dropbox? My external drive has all my past years photographs on it, and my current years on the hard drive since they are more easily accessible and I’m editing them more.
I’d still need to fix the issue outlined above
I’d still need to fix the issue outlined above
- Nancy2 years ago
Dropbox Community Moderator
To answer your first question, yes, that is possible. You can keep your local Dropbox folder with your internal drive’s files on it, while also backing up your external hard drive to the Dropbox cloud.
Regarding the message you keep getting, can you pause the Dropbox app’s syncing and move the files of your external hard drive back to their original place? After that, you can resume syncing and set up the external drive backup.
Let me know if that works, or if you face any issues along the way.
About Delete, edit, and organize
Solve issues with deleting, editing, and organizing files and folders in your Dropbox account with support 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!