Dropbox External Drive Backup - Changing Computers

Hey there, euanburton, thanks for posting here! 

Your feedback regarding our external drive has been very valuable and I will endeavor to make sure your voice is heard.

I definitely see what you mean, and how it's affecting you while it's also not ideal. 

I will pass on your comments to the relevant departments so that we can further improve our product.

If you need anything else, let me know! 

Hello,

I am running into this same issue mentioned in the post above. Is there still no solve for this almost one year after this posted? If I change computers do I need to re-upload my entire external drive?

Hey ajglendinning - could you let us know more about the issue you're facing so that we can advise further?

Would the backups page help with what you had in mind perhaps?

Hi...has there been an update for this? I just bought a new computer and want to continue backing up the same hard drive to my dropbox. But it keeps on creating a new backup. There is no sense in uploading the SAME 1.5 TB of data again. 

Has the dropbox team been able to find a fix for this since it was brought up over a year ago? Walter 

Hi Fabiusssss, currently, there isn't a method to continue using an existing external drive backup when using a different computer. 

When using a different device, it would create a new Dropbox Backup on the site for the external drive.

Is this something you're working on? Especially with larger and critical backups of external hard drives this is an absolute pain in the a**. :/ 

Plus it means, that if the capacity on the drive itself isn't enough to house both backups, the first one would have to be deleted...or of course additional space would have to be bought. 

Currently, we don't have any information about the future roadmap for Dropbox. 

We do appreciate the feedback on this matter and we take all comments into consideration when improving the Dropbox site and services.

It's kind of ridiculous. I have over 8TB of data in backup from an external drive.
Now that I have a new PC, I have to reupload that entire library of data again, on a 20Mbps upload!

Considering just cancelling the Backup plan to be honest. 2 years on and Dropbox doesn't seem to care.

I'm currently testing this workaround.

I changed the default Dropbox sync folder to be on the drive that I originally
wanted to use Dropbox Backup on. I'm dropping the unpolished backup system and
changing how I interact with my files.

I already had a local copy of my Dropbox folder on my external drive (D:\)

I started with changing the default sync folder to D:\Dropbox. That folder
already existed because I had manually copied the entire folder earlier. I
renamed D:\Dropbox to D:\Dropbox.1. After that, I updated my sync settings and
let Dropbox recreate the D:\Dropbox folder. Once that happened, I copied all the
files in D:\Dropbox.1 back into D:\Dropbox. I cut and paste them, overwriting
all existing files.

Once the sync finishes I'll test this on my home laptop. I imagine I'll have to
rename the Dropbox folder again, change the sync path, then cut and paste all
the files back. My hope is that the sync will continue where it left off.

I'll bookmark this page and update here. It will take 3-4 days for my sync to
finish. After that I can test it.