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Forum Discussion
Dropbox doesn't sync symbolic links anymore
Hi,
until this summer I was able to sync folders outside Dropbox using simbolic links.
I just tried again to sync a folder with this tricky method and it's not working. I tried to create simbolic...
Fiona
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffThanks for joining our discussion.
Symlinks were never a Dropbox feature xgirones. They use to work but they were causing huge syncing issues.
I am in the unpleasant position to confirm that the old set up with symlinks will not work.
Sorry to hear that you cannot change your set up.
time4us2fly Was the E folder syncing previously? :thinking: Are both your local folders linked with the same Dropbox account/email address?
Thanks for the clarification. Will support for multiple unrelated folders in different drives be provided instead? IMHO it does not make sense to pay for a 2TB cloud storage that restricts the user to keep everything under the same local folder.
- Fiona
You can keep everything in the Dropbox folder and the Dropbox cloud. Dropbox does not support syncing outside of Dropbox though.
You can have Dropbox folders on different pc users of your device if you wish. You just need to install the application twice to different computer users.
You cannot have two active Dropbox folders in the same pc user and different drives.
Let me know if you want me to clarify this any further.
It seems that the Dropbox team does not understand why using symlinks to manage Dropbox localy is the only reasonable way.
It seems unreasonable to have 2 TB of cloud storage, while on the local drive you have, for example, at most 1 TB of space available (if using SSD drives, for example) on the main drive or partition.
I asked the support team "how do I sync files accros different partitions or drives with just one folder without using junctions?". The answer was clear: "There is no way to do this currently. The files do need to be within the Dropbox folder."
So, Dropbox must be THE ONLY folder you can sync! Just put everything there (it doesn't matter if you don't have a 2TB partition on you SSD drive, we still charge you for 2 TB and we just removed the support for symlinks).Where is the logic in that?
Do all the other cloud storage services are the same? Now I must do a manual sync using third party software (which goes very sloooooly) and I must find another provider that can sync local files as it should be!
Totally agree. It makes no sense and takes out a lot of value of the solution. Leaving Dropbox now, moving to Google Drive.
To put it mildly this is a deal breaking feature retraction (you call it side effect we call it feature).
Dropbox have become useless for me thanks to this. Please work hard and re enable this. I wish you good luck with all my heart in doing so.
Wow, I can't believe this has been removed. I use it for a large number of my files, only to find that (silently) this feature was taken away and that files I thought were backing up haven't been doing so for months! I'm lucky I caught this issue out.
I'm strongly considering moving to Google Drive as well. I spend far too much on Dropbox to have issues like this constantly popping up.
