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carlosr27's avatar
carlosr27
Explorer | Level 3
3 years ago
Solved

how do I eject my external hard drive without deleting everything

I recently synced my dropbox to my external hard drive. However, I have heard that if you remove your external hard drive from your macbook then everything on your dopbox will be deleted. How do I ej...
desktop
sync
  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    3 years ago

    Thanks for the info. If the Dropbox folder is on the external drive, then you need to ensure that you fully quit the Dropbox desktop application from your machine prior to removing the drive to prevent any deletions.

     

    Likewise, when you next want to run the app, make sure the drive is connected and mounted under the same drive or name to prevent deletions.

Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
3 years ago

Thanks for the info. If the Dropbox folder is on the external drive, then you need to ensure that you fully quit the Dropbox desktop application from your machine prior to removing the drive to prevent any deletions.

 

Likewise, when you next want to run the app, make sure the drive is connected and mounted under the same drive or name to prevent deletions.

carlosr27's avatar
carlosr27
Explorer | Level 3
3 years ago

Thank you so much! I was also wondering, on the off-chance that I want to remove my hard drive halfway through syncing everything, how would I go about that? Is there a way to cancel the sync process without deleting anything?

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hey carlosr27 - sorry to jump in here. 

     

    I just wanted to mention that there's no way to cancel syncing, but you can pause it following these steps or move the files that are syncing out of your Dropbox folder and let the app sync your changes till it's up to date. 

     

    Let us know if you have any other questions. 

    • carlosr27's avatar
      carlosr27
      Explorer | Level 3
      3 years ago
      Thank you so much for your response Walter! I was just wondering because my hard drive doesn’t have enough space compared to how big my Dropbox is. I’ll probably get an error saying that the hard drive is full so is there anything I can do to prevent this? If I eject the hard drive now will it erase my Dropbox?
      • Walter's avatar
        Walter
        Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
        3 years ago

        You can use selective sync to remove some folders from your hard drive as this would help free up some space, if needed carlosr27 

         

        And yes, if you eject your hard drive while the desktop app is syncing, this will probably lead to some data loss, so I'd advise against it. 

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