Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨‍💻? Find out how to check here.

Forum Discussion

euanburton's avatar
euanburton
Helpful | Level 6
3 years ago

Dropbox External Drive Backup - Changing Computers

I’ve just found out when you change Laptop / Desktop you can’t continue to use the same external hard drive with Dropbox Backup. This is absolute madness. If you want to continue to use that hard d...
Computer Backup
desktop
Dropbox Backup
upload
Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
2 years ago

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.

Fabiusssss's avatar
Fabiusssss
New member | Level 1
2 years ago

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**. :/ 

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

The Dropbox Community team is active from Monday to Friday. We try to respond to you as soon as we can, usually within 2 hours.

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X, Facebook or Instagram.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!