Dropbox is not uploading or uploading very slowly

I have 2x separate Dropbox Pro accounts (personal + work); run from different PC’s but both connected to the same ISP service.

My 1st Dropbox Pro account (personal; Windows 10) contains >600Gb. It was setup about 4mth ago and initial upload was completed within <10days. It has subsequently worked great!

However, I've recently opened a 2nd Dropbox Pro account (work; Windows 7) and have been trying to complete an initial upload of 315Gb for the last 5 weeks. Unbelievably, it’s still not yet complete. My on-line tested ISP upload speed is quite fast, consistently testing out at ~12Mbps over the last 5 weeks. Yet, after the 1st few days Dropbox upload speed reduced significantly, to at worst an average of 0.1Gb per day after initial 10 days, where it then stayed for almost 2 weeks. During this time my PC was left permanently connected and not used – thinking this would help (more fool me). I checked Dropbox help and tried out what was suggested, with virtually no improvement at all. I contacted Dropbox Support, who were frankly useless: at best suggesting I check the same help pages I had already checked; at worst ignoring my emails.

I eventually talked to my ISP who confirmed that my available upload speed was correct and suggested that the most likely source of slow upload speed is that Dropbox are automatically throttling-back on my upload speed, simply because I am currently uploading constantly. Therefore over the last week, I have routinely re-booted my PC each day, gradually increasing the PC down-time and disconnection time from Dropbox. Eureka! the upload speed has significantly increased. Today after a PC down time of 6hrs, Dropbox upload speed increased to >20Gb in ~12hrs. Hopefully, once initial upload is complete (only 18Gb left) this 2nd Dropbox Pro account will perform similar to my 1st account.

I hope my above experience may help others.

Following on from my previous message. After some further testing I now believe that Dropbox Pro initial upload/download speeds can dramatically slow-down if any of your file paths are too long: i.e. exceed Window limit of 255 characters.

My 'work' Dropbox Pro account did have several file paths that exceeded the 255 limit. Mainly due to imported nested folders and descriptive, but long, file names.

An easy way to check and resolve this issue is to: download TLPD – really simple portable free software; run TLPD to check you drives for file paths >255 characters; if any found, manually edit all excessive file paths to be <255 characters. Ideally, do this before initial Dropbox upload/download to 1st PC.

Also, as before, reboot PC once every 24hrs until initial upload/download is complete.

I hope the above is of help to others.

Yep, unfortunately I still have this problem as well. I get ~100mbit/s on Dropbox, and I typically get anywhere from 500-700mbit/s on google drive. Unforunately, I still need to use dropbox because there are other features I rely on. 

I had a 5 week game of ping-pong going with dropbox support before they finally gave up and said, in not so many words "We don't know what is wrong, but you are getting an 'acceptable' level of service, so we can't help you"

Such is how it goes, I guess. 

I'm sure someone, somewhere at dropbox knows what the issue is, but it isn't something they want to disclose to the public. Guess I just have to keep waiting for their tech to catch up...

Hey jeanzbeanz,

Can you please try refreshing your Dropbox installation on your device by running the installer from here ?

This could resolve this.

Let me know if it works, I'll be around to help!

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond!  

I have tried your suggestion and ONE photo uploaded... and unfortunately it seems to be stuck again :(

Any other ideas?

This fixed my problem!!

meljaxx Yay!  :grinning: