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eliasedlund's avatar
eliasedlund
Explorer | Level 4
18 days ago

Dropbox keeps on trying to upload 'dbx.external.drive' on MacOS 15.6

Hi. I've tried to clear out all of my backups from Dropbox. I was previously backing up two external drives, but I don't want to do that anymore. 

So I've deleted the drives from the Backup Manager page, no problem. But when I hit 'Sync' on my Dropbox app, it's creating a file under .dropbox/logs/1 that fills with small files until my entire hard drive is full.

I went in and deleted all of these files once (144GB!), which didn't seem to affect functionality of anything, then it immediately went to fill it back up again. The only file it says "Syncing" in the app is dbx.external.drive.

I'm on a Dropbox Professional Plan, using a Mac Studio running 15.6 Sequoia. Using version 236.4.5918.

8 Replies

  • Jasper B.3's avatar
    Jasper B.3
    Helpful | Level 5
    14 days ago

    I've spent the whole day trying to get on top of this. I thought it had resolved but it's doing the same thing over and over. I can't get it to upload anything. Additionally the app crashes (Win 10, up to date with long term support) after it gets stuck for a while, usually after about 12Gb of logs.

  • Jasper B.3's avatar
    Jasper B.3
    Helpful | Level 5
    14 days ago

    I should add that the hard drive space issue caused a crash in Ableton Live so bad that it couldn't save and then corrupted my preferences, all my hours of setup to get the colours, key commands, saved folders, audio setup etc lost. It has now resolved itself by deleting the files and deleting the folder that was stuck syncing and reuploading (I had a copy seperate to dropbox fortunately.) Still I think 75Gb of logs created in one day on the system drive (seperate to the dropbox folder) is unacceptable.

  • eliasedlund's avatar
    eliasedlund
    Explorer | Level 4
    14 days ago

    Ok so I logged out, logged back in, then Dropbox somehow forgot about all the files on my computer, so it had to re-sync my entire Dropbox Folder, then upload it to offline only. 

    Good news is now it seems to be working properly. 

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    14 days ago

    Hi Jasper B.3, thanks for the info. In order to look into this matter in more detail, I'd recommend contacting the support team directly for them to investigate further.

  • Jasper B.3's avatar
    Jasper B.3
    Helpful | Level 5
    14 days ago

    I'm having the same issue on PC. It's bringing my system to a crawl as the logs folder is on the minimal OS partition.

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    16 days ago

    Thanks for the additional information and the screenshot too eliasedlund​ - most appreciated.

    Can you navigate the app's preferences and see if there's any 'sync issues' reported? 

    In the meantime, you could also try signing out from your account in the Dropbox desktop app and then back in again. 

  • eliasedlund's avatar
    eliasedlund
    Explorer | Level 4
    17 days ago

    I've restarted everything, yes. Backups are not showing up on my Backups Page, no.

    Right now it says Syncing 2 Files, previously it was only one, the aforementioned.

     

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    18 days ago

    Hey eliasedlund​ - thanks for letting us know about this.

    If this persists after rebooting your computer and/or quitting and relaunching the app, could you send us a screenshot of the app's exact status as shown in your menu bar? Also, are your backups still showing up in your backups page?

    Let me know what you find and we'll take it from there. 

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