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

Forum Discussion

dgallant's avatar
dgallant
Helpful | Level 6
3 years ago
Solved

Restoring backup drive to new hardware

The external drive that I backed up died. I never tested this, but assumed that there was a way to get the files back onto the drive. It is a large folder of folders, but every time I tried to download a child folder I get an error that it contains too many zips. 

 

Is there a fairly standard way to rebuild the external hard drive that I backed up?

 

Can I connect this drive to the machine and let the Dropbox Mac OS App do the work for me?

Cheers, and thanks in advance 

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    3 years ago

    Currently, there isn't another method to download the files from the site, aside from what I've mentioned by downloading them in smaller batches. 

14 Replies

Replies have been turned off for this discussion
  • dgallant's avatar
    dgallant
    Helpful | Level 6
    3 years ago

    Hello

    I reformatted the drive and selected it to be used by the Backup product.
    It looks like I have 2 drives now, one empty, and one with the data that I want to move onto the new drive.

     

    The first drive that was backed up died, but I want the data back on the external hard drive as well as Dropbox Backup.

     

    Is there any way to merge a 2nd device into the first backup snapshot? Better yet, even have it continue on from the first?

     

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hi there dgallant, sorry to hear about this.

     

    Can you please confirm that you're following these steps? Also, could you send us a screenshot of the exact error you're getting so that we  can have a look too?

     

    How large are the folders you're trying to  download by the way and how many files do they contain approximately?

     

    Let us know more and we'll take it from there. 

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!