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 

Dropbox Backup
restore
  • 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
Show More
  • ajeighh's avatar
    ajeighh
    New member | Level 2
    4 months ago

    Asking the same question from 2 years in the future.  I have 1.6TB "backed up" on dropbox.  The external drive that these files were on has now failed.  There is no way I can just select folders from the website and download them in zip files.  It'll take forever!

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    4 months ago

    Hey ajeighh - thanks for joining the discussion.

    I'm afraid the only way to do this is the one you mentioned as outlined here.

    I wish I had a better answer than this. 

  • ajeighh's avatar
    ajeighh
    New member | Level 2
    4 months ago

    I suppose that serves me right for not investigating whether the blindingly obvious requirements for backup restoration were covered before I signed up.  The hunt for another service provider starts today!

  • dgallant's avatar
    dgallant
    Helpful | Level 6
    4 months ago

    I felt the same way. After this happened to me, I bought a Synology with external hard drive for a duplicate backup.

     

    Dropbox backup is not a real product, and they hide it from much of their public facing marketing materials. It is a shame for us paying customers that we assume anything positive about it.

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!