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With a 300k File Limit - Does Dropbox Really Provide Business Solutions?
For many many years, I've been a Dropbox Pro member. During this time, they decided at some point, that 300,000 files is the maximum they will support. Now, I know what you are thinking. The ar...
I did not accept this as a solution (now fixed). It doesn't solve anything and is factually incorrect. At the time of your reply and this post, there is a baked in hard-limit in Dropbox that makes it unusable - and your support team refused to provide support to anyone with over 300K files. Nothing in your response you marked as the "answer" addresses this in any way shape or form. Wishing you had the answer isn't the same as providing one.
The right answer was moving to Google Drive and getting an actual business grade cloud based file sync solution in place.
i've been running into a similar problem with sync.com.
i've been a early dropbox supporter since day one, always had premium plans, when they had their 2tb individual plan i was really happy, because thats basically what i need, done. nope. 300000 files limit - back then there was no hint about that, when having 2.500000 files online i almost lost all of them, because that thing wne totally bonkers.
anyways, i quit after that, and checked out sync.com - who had the same plan for less money, with no file limits, but a limited gui. their big problem was, that they dont have a search and you cant really download or share big files (because it downloads them first - and after that again - which is an absolute nightmare if you're on a mobile) and i asked them for two years why the hell its not possible to change or improve that?! and honestly i really dont get why those two companies (in my case) are not able to implement those features or get rid of those bugs. a proper business that has a dropbox account will likely exceed that file limit. i love the dropbox menu and file system and up to 300000 files its an absolute charme to work with. for now i've gone back to google drive, the only acceptable gui, file history and no issues with larger files or file limits. only downside is that their updates are linear, so if its uploading a bunch of files and you change something during that period and extensively copy or move folders - it might get little bit messy. but all in all - best bang for the buck, by far. and i've tried every f-in single other competitor. dear dropbox - the day you can handle this - please let your customers know - or your ex-customers. i really hope you can and want to change something bout those issues.
Dealing with the same issues here. Thnanks for sharing all this. Dropbox replied to me after 2 days then another 4 days and completely disregarded my updates and feedback regarding the issues. In fact, the message I received is below. More boilerplate responses. No explanation regarding whether that's the reason why the service just stopped working recently, despite having no issues over a month ago. Also no explanation for why only a previous version of their software will even begin to syn (but locks up eventually) . Will be moving to another service if even for "better" service and will be advising others the same. I have a month before my subscription expires. I think they are so big they don't think service matters anymore. They are pretty great at "copy and paste" help service so gotta give them credit that they have mastered that useful skill.
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- Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
Sorry to hear about this vscript - I have passed your comments along to the team and nudged the expert handling your case, informing them on your current status - thank you for the feedback; we appreciate it whether positive or negative.
In addition, I can see that our higher level technician has provided you with an update on your email so I'd suggest that you continued directly with them via your existing ticket.
If there is anything I can help with from my end, do let me know.
the problem is, it's not just vscript, it's all of us.
and probably a **bleep** whole lot more who dont take their time to write some form of feedback into this forum...
what i dont get is how this hasn't been solved yet....it's just that file limit, without that it would be freakin ace.
what is the technical reason for this, if there is one? could someone of dropxbox explain that to us? please?- Afaik it is a 2 part problem.
My theory
On the PC side, they created a 32bit application which means a hard memory limit of 4GB. And they built it in such a way it had to retain every file in memory, instead of just a reference to the file. So after 300k files they will hit some kind of internal memory limit. And somehow they loop it through system processes, which can cause a BSOD.
The bigger problem is their backend is a hot mess. I get server and 404 errors all the time - even just doing basic operations like restoring files.
I think they made some poor architectural decisions that can't be solved without impacting their full user base. And that's why services like Google Drive - which no longer follow those old architecture patterns, aren't having these issues.
It's important to remember their bread and butter is users paying monthly with only 50 files - anyone seriously using it they don't want and can't afford to keep on their fractured platform. Imho of course This all makes sense. But it's hard to believe that something else hasn't changed recently. I didn't have these sync issues two months again and virutally nothing has changed on my end. The new versions of the software don't even lead to a connection/sync. Only 51.4.66 installs correctly which leads me to believe there are further regulatory changes embedded in the architecture. Further, the online platform shows my PC synced and operating on that same 51.4.66 version. Further suggestion that they've made recent changes. Of course, the auto update then renders the sync useless and no one at DB has actually explained the changes despite me asking over and over.
- my problem now is, I need to find a service that works. I had all my files transferred to sync. I've quit now as they weren't able to implement a proper search feature for years and also their download feature is a joke. then I uploaded everything to Google drive. well not everything because it's so unbelievably slow (I tried all the tricks) and after finishing a few folders (that folder has probably a 100000 files on its own, but is only a few gigs big) I wanted to remove them, as in selectable sync. drive is removing them since over a week now....til it starts (and finishes processing) it takes almost an hour, and it crashes regularly. the drive support is a joke, unfortunately. I googled pcloud for a while and it sounded too good to be true, I've heard of stuck transfers, folder structures gone missing, etc. it's crazy but it seems like all those cloud services really just work out perfectly as long as you have a few gigs only, maybe just enough to be a paying customer. so I'm still on a quest for a service for my 2tbs....the search continues...
The soft limit caused a huge headache for me. After syncing a few Apple Photo libraries, my file count went to 2M. Dropbox became unusable for a month. It took weeks for me to find a workaround on a second computer by slowly syncing and deleting files.
Support responses were slow and mostly unhelpful. After losing a month of access to my Dropbox client, I asked for a refund for the lost month. They told me they don't do that but could give me an extra 2GB <eyeroll/>.
This happened May-June, 2018.
Has anyone made progress on this? I am about to change to Google Drive if it is still the recommended solution for larger file counts. I currently have around 1.3 million files and I managed to workaround this by running multiple Dropbox instances in docker containers on a server, but that is extremely stupid and way more work than should be necessary. Yeah, it worked, but I don't want to deal with it anymore. If Google Drive can sync my files without causing an IT nightmare, that would be ideal. I'm hesitant to switch, but I'm not sure why I guess. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
- tbh I would not do change to Google drive. I did that and it was a biiiiig. mistake, I lost so many files because drive has similar problems. it still works with that many files, but it will take about 5 to 15 minutes or longer to start and uploading/migrating that many files will very likely lead to errors (drive uploads in the exact order, one file after the other, which very often leads to errors). I kept an instance of Dropbox for the most important files and a big pcloud backup for the rest, which costs about 10 a month for 2tbs and has handy features, like you see the files but they're not there physically. also the app works pretty fast and reliable. Worth to check it out before you go drive and for sure will regret it at some point, never had so many corrupt or missing files in my cloud backup history.
- by the way... why the hell is this marked as solved??? it isn't solved and hasn't been taken care of, has it.
The "solution" pointed out is to switch to Google Drive :relieved: :wink:
BTW, which I did two years ago, and I am very happy indeed.
I keep following this topic to see if dropbox will deign to present a solution ...
aah, i see, ok ;) well you got lucky then, i really struggled with drive, especially because i had to migrate a lot of files at the same time to 3 systems and it didnt go that well, unfortunately i discovered that weeks later...anyways, still a mystery to me how dropbox doesnt seem to be keen for a proper fix and solution here.
let's wait and see ...Dropbox has no solution and I don't think they planning on finding one. We need to make the switch as well and it seems like everyone favors Google drive??
Thank you for your patience on this matter.
It appears your Dropbox account contains a large amount of files. The performance of the Dropbox application starts to decline after reaching about 300,000 files. You can read more about this issue in the Help Center:
https://www.dropbox.com/help/39
One way you can speed up your Dropbox is by using selective sync. Selective sync lets you control which files and folders are being synced with your computer. Remember that if you’re having trouble accessing your files right now because of selective sync issues, your files are safe and accessible on dropbox.com.
Learn how to use selective sync in this Help Center article:
https://www.dropbox.com/help/175
Regards,
Matt