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Can I back up my Dropbox folder to an external drive if my internal drive is not big enough?
Question or Issue
I have a lot of data on Dropbox related to my research. I would like to keep a back up somewhere other than Dropbox. All recommendations on the internet suggest that I make the folder available offline (i.e. save it to local drive) and then back it up to external drive. Unfortunately, my computer's hard drive is now too small. Is there any solution other than downloading in batches? It is very tedious to do this one folder at a time, especially if I want to back up regularly.
I looked into possibly syncing Drobox directly with a large external drive but I see on forums that is not recommended because if the external drive gets disconnected for some reason, Dropbox can interpret that as files being deleted on the local drive and in the next sync delete everything on the cloud. That is a risk I cannot take.
Unfortunately, my computer's hard drive is now too small. Is there any solution other than downloading in batches?
Use a third-party tool like Cyberduck or Mountain Duck to directly access your Dropbox files in the cloud.
Cyberduck lets you browse and download files from your account, and Mountain Duck lets you mount your Dropbox as a drive. Either option will let you copy files directly from Dropbox to your external drive.
5 Replies
I thought initially that the Mountain Duck suggestion would solve my problem. I have installed Mountain Duck and tried to copy my Dropbox folders over to an external drive. Some of the smaller folders copied over without a problem. But Mountain Duck gets stuck on the large folders (>50GB).
I get different errors such as 'some files cannot be read or written' or 'The folder needs to be downloaded first'. I have opened a ticket with Mountain Duck but for now my problem remains unsolved.
I might just have to move to a different shared service.
- Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi JustAsking25!
Still stuck with this, or did you work some magic and fix it? Either way, we'd love to know what fixed it for you, or if you still need some help.
Thank you for the suggestions! I will try those out.
- Rich
Super User II
Unfortunately, my computer's hard drive is now too small. Is there any solution other than downloading in batches?
Use a third-party tool like Cyberduck or Mountain Duck to directly access your Dropbox files in the cloud.
Cyberduck lets you browse and download files from your account, and Mountain Duck lets you mount your Dropbox as a drive. Either option will let you copy files directly from Dropbox to your external drive.
- Hannah
Welcome to our Community, JustAsking25.
Let me start by saying that everything you mentioned that you read online is correct.
There's no automatic way to back up your Dropbox folder somewhere else, you can only do it manually in the ways you described in your post.
Perhaps you can look for some kind of third party app or service that will allow you to do this some other way, but that would be out of our scope and we wouldn't be able to help you with any issues that might come up.
If you have other questions about any of this, please let us know.
