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Forum Discussion

Viqhaas M.'s avatar
Viqhaas M.
New member | Level 1
11 years ago
Solved

Dropbox is re-syncing my files again?

Why on earth is this happening ?!? its resyncing everything again nothing has been changed why ?
desktop
sync
  • DOsinga's avatar
    DOsinga
    9 years ago

    I don't recall any changes to the OS etc. It didn't say re-indexing, it said updating and the number of files kept increasing. After one or two days it was still going like crazy.

     

    I found online somewhere that I should delete filecache.dbx. I did that, restarted dropbox. Now it did re-index all files, but this only took a couple of hours. I've not had a problem since.

     

    I think it would be nice if Dropbox would pay attention to this sort of thing in a more timely fashion for paying customers.

Rosemary U.'s avatar
Rosemary U.
Explorer | Level 4
7 years ago

I am looking for an alternative to Dropbox because of this problem.  I think it is related to how Windows 10 handles files but it doesn't happen on all my computers, so I am not sure.  None-the-less it seems to happen to other people as well so a solution should be available.

 

Marco22's avatar
Marco22
Explorer | Level 4
7 years ago

I see the same issue on my Mac, so it happens across both Mac and Windows.... 

  • Jane's avatar
    Jane
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    7 years ago
    Hey there (Marco22) & (Rosemary U.), while there could have been a few things coming into play in your setup, I’d like to follow-up on how this has manifested itself on your end. If you don’t mind me asking, have you monitored the Dropbox performance on your Activity Monitor/ Task Manager perchance? What have you found there? 
     
    From there, it would be worth mentioning that we recommend avoiding the use of Symlinks &/ or storing a large number of files in your Dropbox folder as a rule of thumb, since it can affect your syncing speed. I’m also wondering whether the amount of files you’ve currently synced on your device is surpassing the recommended 300,000 files soft limit. Have you utilized Selective sync at all Marco? 
     
    Please include as much info as possible on this discussion here & I’ll make sure to check back with you & send you the best next steps to tackle this behavior. Thanks for posting us on the Dropbox Community & enjoy the rest of your day until we talk again! 
  • Marco22's avatar
    Marco22
    Explorer | Level 4
    7 years ago

    Hi Jane, thanks - 

    In activity monitor, Dropbox has been at >100% for the past 24h. I still have 185k files to sync. 

    I do have a lot of files, the total number at the moment is 332,631 items. I will try to reduce their number. However, looking at this forum thread, the issue seems to be unrealted to the number of files.... It'll just take more time to reindex the entire Dropbox folder.

    Selective sync is selected on a few other computers, but not on this one. However, the same issue is present on other Mac, where I sync only a few folders. There, when the problem occurs, the reindexing is simply faster.

    My opinion is that this issue affects most people with multiple syncs to different PCs (like me), but most people don't notice as they don't have so many files, so the re-indexing is quick.

    One hint here: It might not be a coincidence that this happened after I uninstalled Dropbox, linked to the same account, on another Windows 10 Pro PC. In that PC, I only selectively synced one folder, which cointained only a couple of files (but very large ones, >20 GB). Once files were all synced (green) on this Windows machine, I uninstalled the app from Windows (so unlinked that account), and then the resync started on the other Mac.

    I believe you should know by know what's causing this issue, given that this post is 4 years old?

    I'm not using SymLinks within Dropbox, but I'm using SymLinks that point to Dropbox folders, I'm quite sure this cannot be an issue, as Dropbox doesn't have any idea about external symlinks pointing to one of its folders.

    Thanks, Marco

  • Jane's avatar
    Jane
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    7 years ago
    Thanks for looping back to me with on our discussion here (Marco22)! 
     
    For starters, it would be worth noting that the re-syncing description isn’t diagnosing the root cause of this behavior Marco. On the contrary, it’s been masking various underlying issues under the syncing umbrella that should be best treated separately. In other words, despite the thread being active for 4 years, this doesn’t reflect the progress made on the topic but rather shows us that there are a few things coming into play when your files are constantly syncing (& this also means that there isn’t a single treatment to amend that). 
     
    Now, I’d like follow-up a bit closer on your report, as I have a clearer picture of what this looks like on your end; thanks a lot for describing matters to me in such detail.  
     

    I do have a lot of files, the total number at the moment is 332,631 items. I will try to reduce their number. 

    Please do Marco, as this should also alleviate the high memory usage on your Activity Monitor. If this persists after you do, then we’ll probably need to have a closer look on your setup on our system. Do keep me updated on how you get on applying Selective Sync here & I’ll try to touch base with you asap. 
     

    I'm not using SymLinks within Dropbox, but I'm using SymLinks that point to Dropbox folders, I'm quite sure this cannot be an issue, as Dropbox doesn't have any idea about external symlinks pointing to one of its folders.

    This could affect the overall resource management (& consequently the performance) on your device however if the link is outside Dropbox, then it shouldn't be an issue.
     
    Thanks again for keeping in touch on this converstion & I'll be awaiting to see whether there's any improvement after removing some content locally!
  • nuss's avatar
    nuss
    New member | Level 2
    6 years ago

    Is there a solution?  Dropbox is resynching for days, and therefore is consuming a lot of resources.  

     

    I also find the limitation of 300,000 files problematic.  I am paying for 2TB a year.  Even if ther size of each of my files is 4MB, which is not the case, then 2TB storage is supposed to handle 500,000 files.  

     

    Am I paying Dropbox for service that it cannot provide?

     

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