Online-Only Not Working?

Hey there KeyBlue - welcome to our forums and happy Monday! 

Based on your description you'd like to use our Smart Sync feature when copying or moving your files from a network drive to your Dropbox folder - correct me if I got anything wrong please.

Note that your Dropbox folder is just a normal folder on your hard drive. Therefore, if you drag and drop files into the Dropbox folder, those files will be moved instead of copied.

Another thing to note is that with Smart Sync you don't need to delete your files to make space locally -just set your (existing) files to be "Online Only" (by right clicking on them and marking them as such).

Once you've applied the changes you want (the small batches may be a good idea depending on your devices capacity) give it some time to sync until it shows "up to date" (which in turn would mean you're fully synced). Also note that you can boost the syncing process by changing your bandwidth settings as well if you like. 

Keep me posted on your progress!

Hi Walter, many thanks for your reply.

That's pretty much it - we want all files to be 'Online Only' because we have 2 TB of data but only 500GB of storage on each Mac.

I've set everything to Online-Only in the preferences, and as a precaution right click and make sure all folders are set to online-only.

So just to confirm - Once Dropbox has finished syncing, will these files technically no longer be on my hard drive and instead have been uploaded to Dropbox?

Currently the two Macs we're using to upload all this data are set to 'online-only' but have full hard drives with the folders in the local Dropbox folder.

Thanks

Yes, exactly KeyBlue - just keep in mind that many processes on your machine may look at files that you might have not manually opened and in order to fulfill these requests from these processes Dropbox syncs the files (thus making them local again and taking up hard drive space on your computers). Examples of this include:

• Backup services
• Antivirus
• Recently used file lists
• Third party applications that monitor files in general.

If a file has been synced locally that you would prefer to have online-only, simply right click on it again and select online-only from the Smart Sync menu.

I hope this information is helpful to you while I remain at your disposal should you have any more questions or concerns. 

Many thanks for your reply Walter.

As a test, I uploaded 500GB of files two days ago to give everything enough time to sync.

I've just checked and unfortunately the space is still being taken up on my hard drive.

We have no local processes like you mentioned, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on.

All folders are set to 'online-only'.

Thanks

Hi

I'm experiencing exactly the same problem. Migrating to a Macbook Pro with limited memory.

• All my backedup Lightroom Catalogs and files (not images)
• are set to Online Only
• are not being used or accessed by Lightroom CC Classic
• as while I have installed Lightroom I am not yet using any of the old Catalogs

Dropbox is still syncing about 80k of files, and I upgraded tio Professional to access the SmartSync functionality part way through the migration. Slightly different to the OP's situation, however could this be holding up the change from Local to Online Only?

Not sure if this adds to the clues:

Uploading on two Macs, everything set to 'Online-only', why is one of the Macs saying 'downloading files'? If I've set everything to 'Online-only', surely they should stay online?

Also two days after uploading completed Monday, those files are still taking up space on my Mac. I can see they've taken up space on Dropbox (23% from the screenshot above) so why haven't they been removed from my local Dropbox folder yet?

I've ran out of ideas with this one. Both Macs are now full, both have already uploaded a few hundred GB of data, but this data hasn't been removed locally. The data isn't being accessed from anywhere yet as we're still using our local network until this upload is complete.

EDIT: I can confirm 3 hours later what little disk space I did have left has continued to drop, so it's downloading files despite everything being 'Online-only'.

Hey there KeyBlue  and farmeron  - sorry about your issues with Smart Sync.

Now, kindly note that syncing your files can take time if you have many files or large files. Just because the files have been placed into the Dropbox folder doesn't mean the syncing has completed.

When Dropbox syncs the files it starts with all of the folders, then uploads files from smallest to largest. Thus, it may look like the folders are empty or incomplete if you look during the syncing process. Please be patient and the files will sync. Do not delete them from the Dropbox folder if the files haven't finished syncing.

You can always see the sync status by holding your mouse over the Dropbox icon. See here: https://www.dropbox.com/help/syncing-uploads/check-progress

If the syncing is slow, try changing your bandwidth settings. 

farmeron : If you're still facing this issue, please send me a screenshot showing your desktop app's exact status. 

Thanks again fellas.

Thank you for confirming.

This has indeed now finished uploading, four days later...

We plan on using Dropbox to store all our files and work on everything using Dropbox as our main storage source with everything set to 'Online-only'.

Since it's taken so long just to upload these files, can we expect this sort of speed day to day when working on them? While I understand there are restrictions in terms of upload speeds etc, this could throw a spanner in the works in terms of our working processes.

Glad to hear that and thanks for the update KeyBlue! 

Now, in regards to your concern, note that syncing your files can take time if you have many or large files. Just because the files have been placed into the Dropbox folder doesn't mean the syncing has completed. You need to be patient and let the files sync -exactly as you did!

Moreover, kindly note that the Dropbox servers do not set caps on the upload or download speeds from the Desktop client, but file sync is a complicated process that includes more than just the transfer of the data as each file is divided and compressed into hashed components, transferred via secure data transfer, and then encrypted and stored on our servers. During an upload, the transfer speeds are also dependent upon how quickly your computer can process and compress the components of the files to make them available for upload.

The Dropbox client will also batch upload smaller files into batches of 800 files. If you have 800 * 1 kB files the effective batch that's sent to Dropbox will be 800 kB in size. You may commonly see this behavior when Dropbox first starts syncing as the client starts with smallest files first and then progresses to larger files.

Thus, the initial sync of your data is going to be the most time and resource intensive period. However, the more you use Dropbox the more efficient syncing becomes:

• Once you upload a file to Dropbox, you never need to upload it again.
• When editing large files, the Dropbox app attempts to sync only the blocks of the file that have changed.

Bear in mind that the actual sync speed you see may not match these speeds directly as we are including the hash, compression, and encryption process in our aggregate kB/s speed (that is kiloBYTEs not kilobits per second).

I hope this information clarifies matters further and I remain at your disposal should you have any more questions! 

Hi @Walter

I can see this happening now . v e r y   s l o w l y . 

As both KeyBlue and I are raising this an issue caused by migration between computers and I note that other comments elsewhere are also experiencing this level of uncertainty in either an adoption or migration scenario....may I suggest a feature request?

• At the very basic level why not have a "Pending" icon that lets your users know that something is actually happening and that we have to wait
• At a more sophisticated level perhaps a more detailed reporting interface that details the queue. 
• Or maybe something more innovative that the the DropBox developers can come up with.

Thanks

Yaron