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Dropbox Files Take Up Hard Drive Space
My laptop keeps showing me that my Dropbox files are taking up space on my hard drive. I am certain they are syncing and on the cloud. How do I resolve this? Thanks.
Thanks for taking the time to post here, Roni5050.
Just wanted to let you know that the Dropbox desktop app's job is to sync local versions of your files to your computer.
This allows you to access your Dropbox files and work on them, even if you're not connected to the internet and it's our preferred method of uploading/downloading larger files.
You can of course still use the website and if you'd like, you can also use our selective sync feature, which will help you remove entire folders from your Dropbox folder, but keep them on dropbox.com, to free up some of your space.
I hope this helps!
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Are you using the free version of Dropbox, or a paid version? It looks like the free version uses hard drive space now, and only paid dropbox uses cloud storage
- Lusil
Dropbox Staff
- I use a paid version.
- Rich
Super User II
Free or Paid doesn't matter. By default, the Dropbox folder on your computer is ON your computer and takes up local drive space. The primary purpose of Dropbox is to sync files between your computer and your account online, along with other devices linked to your account. Dropbox is, by default, not a cloud-based folder or drive where your files only exist in the cloud.
Using Selective Sync (available to all accounts) or Smart Sync (available on Professional and Business accounts) you can remove the local copies of folders and files. See Lusil's reply above for links to the appropriate help articles for more information.
I find myself Googling how to do this every few years, why don't they make these things easier to use? I have a very slow pc jammed up with files that I thought were in the cloud. Same for Google Drive. A complete waste of time. All help articles seem out of date and I get lost trying to simply un-sync the friggen folders on my hard drive!
- Lusil
Hey there ausworkshop,
If your hard drive is running out of space and you want to remove some folders from your Dropbox folder on your computer but not your Dropbox account, you can selectively sync them.
Please bear in mind that this is a space-saving, device-specific feature, which means that whichever folders you choose to selectively sync on one computer will not be removed from another.
I hope this helps, but don't hesitate to get back to me if you have any other questions!
This is what I don't understand about smart sync though - I'm a photographer and have a ton of RAW files and large jpg files from editing in Lightroom and Photoshop. I save all my filed to my Professional Dropbox account because I've had multiple failed external hard drives and computers. I use the smart sync function and it simply doesn't matter. I'm running critically low on computer space every single day. What is the deal with this? It's driving me nuts that I can't figure it out.
Hello,
I'm using Dropbox Pro on Windows 10. In my preferences:
- "online only" is set
- "Selected Sync" is used and zero folder is selected (absolutely nothing)
So in theory, I should have nothing copied to my hard drive by Dropbox.
Note that I can't use the online version as I'm backuping huge files online, and the web version of Dropbox is limited in terms of file size.
I'm pretty much upset because Dropbox keeps on copying files to my hard drive, no matter what I do. What did I miss?
- Mark
Hi FredericVT
To upload initially they have to go in to your Dropbox folder locally. Thats the only way to upload via the software. Once they have then uploaded you can use the web interface to move them to a none sync'd folder or turn it to Online Only. However, you HAVE to do the local part first
