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PhilR's avatar
PhilR
New member | Level 2
13 days ago

Changes to files or folders being synced to locally recently

Was there a change to how the files were being synced from the cloud recently?  Files that were in the cloud stayed sync off the machine locally but now are trying to sync on the machine and taking up hard drive space unlike before.  Nothing was changed and seems it just started last week.  Unsure if there was an update as it appears to be happening with a few others in my company as well.  

4 Replies

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Hi PhilR, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

    Currently, there hasn't been any changes to syncing on the Dropbox desktop application.

    Are the files being accessed by another process or app on your machine, which could bring the files back to available offline again?

    Are these files in random locations, or in specific folders on your machine?

    This will help me to assist further!

    • PhilR's avatar
      PhilR
      New member | Level 2

      The files are located in Dropbox and only accessed as needed.  The file and folders are not random but seem to be now any and all.  It was odd trying to see what the disk space of the files being used in the cloud did not match the folder location on the device.  The amounts were completely off as on the machines it said like 4TB but being used on the machine was only 86GB.  There were other files in the folder that were pending to be sync but failed because of the disk space.  

      • Rich's avatar
        Rich
        Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
        PhilR wrote:

        The files are located in Dropbox and only accessed as needed.

        Only accessed BY YOU as needed, but what about anything else? Any service that tries to interact with the files would cause them to download back to your local drive. A backup, antivirus scan, etc. Anything that touches the file will cause them to sync. Even browsing them through other applications with thumbnails visible could cause them to sync again.

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