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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!
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.
Rich
Super User II
Super User II
cpie23 wrote:
I use the smart sync function and it simply doesn't matter. I'm running critically low on computer space every single day.
Are you on a Mac?
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
Oh, that's bad news! I have huge files on external drives. I can't copy them locally first. So I need to change by dropbox directory to each external drive until everything is uploaded for the first time? I wish it was are easy as a FTP client...
