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

Forum Discussion

Elyse g.2's avatar
Elyse g.2
New member | Level 1
11 years ago
Solved

Dropbox is creating multiple copies of all my files and saving them to my hard drive, to the point where my entire HD storage is full. WHY? HOW CAN I STOP THIS?

I have a MacBook Air and do not keep a lot of large files (photos, music, movies, audio etc) on my hard drive. But the other day I got a message that I was out of disc storage! When I investigated i...
desktop
sync
  • Lifer10's avatar
    Lifer10
    9 years ago
    1. Click on the Dropbox icon in your menu bar or system tray.
    2. Click on the gear icon and then select Preferences.
    3. Click on the Sync icon at the top bar
    4. Unclick every folder marked and leave clicked the ones you want to synk on your computer. 
    5. Dropbox will erase every copy it made on your computer and will not longer create files on your hard drive.I

    I had the same problem and I just figured out how tofix it. Good Luck. 

     

    [This thread is now closed by moderators due to inactivity. If you're experiencing a similar behavior, feel free to start a new discussion in the Dropbox Community here.]

Elyse g.2's avatar
Elyse g.2
New member | Level 1
11 years ago

WOW.  Dave, that is both great news and ridiculous news, as I think my total hours on phone is something like 6-8 hrs in last 2 days.  -- I myself did not notice the difference between "Drop Box" (with a space between words, which is the Apple OS feature)  and "Dropbox" (no space between words, which is the 3rd party software) until I noticed it today and pointed it out in the file paths I've been discussing with 2 different AppleCare supervisors.

The one today said he was completely unaware of it, had to go to someone else and find out about it while  was on hold!

He says its a permissions issue.  We managed to clear out about a third of my total disc space by deleting duplicate files (a couple of nights ago I had downloaded a program called Araxis that finds and deletes duplicate files), and clearing out the Drop Box (with space) folder on my hard drive.

I don't know why all my Google-ing and searches didn't get me to the page you pulled up. Maybe because I didn't put a space between the "Drop" and the "Box"  

I don't know why Apple and Dropbox aren't suing each other for using the same name and confusing Apple's customers. Or maybe they did. 

Anyway, I'm giving you an "up vote" for whatever that's worth!  THANK YOU!

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!