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How drop box saves
I am setting up drop box for a new employee and want to be able to view some of her files. She will be working from a flash drive. If I upload the files I want to be able to view from her flash drive and tell her to edit them in drop box, will they automatically save over her flash drive file as well? That is what I would like to happen and i think it is called syncing... but do I have to set that up or does it do that automatically?
Then I would like to back up her flash drive to drop box too as a separate action. Can that be done and if so how?
Thank you
Dropbox is installed on local internal drives - it does not work on flash drives. Remember Dropbox was designed to replace flash drives. It isnt designed at all to work with them - and trying to do so will almost certainly cause data loss.
If you want to save a file to Dropbox and then the flash drive you need to save it twice - once in to Dropbox and then on to the flash drive. Either via File -> Save as or by copying the directory.
Flash drive backup is possible. You can see that at https://help.dropbox.com/organize/how-to-use-dropbox-backup, however, those files and folders backed up wont appear on the computer. They are just online in a separate backup area.
5 Replies
- Mark
Super User II
Hi
Sorry what you are looking for isnt possible.
Dropbox creates a folder on a local device. Work needs to be in that to sync to the cloud - it, however, does not have any link at all to any other device or location. So updating files inside Dropbox will sync to the Dropbox cloud (and other computers running Dropbox), but not any older folder or flash drive etc.
Another question - what local device does dropbox create the folder on? The hard drive of the computer just not the flash drive? How would I backup or save a drop box file to the flash drive then?
Also would like to backup the whole flash drive to drop box too. How is that done?
- Mark
Dropbox is installed on local internal drives - it does not work on flash drives. Remember Dropbox was designed to replace flash drives. It isnt designed at all to work with them - and trying to do so will almost certainly cause data loss.
If you want to save a file to Dropbox and then the flash drive you need to save it twice - once in to Dropbox and then on to the flash drive. Either via File -> Save as or by copying the directory.
Flash drive backup is possible. You can see that at https://help.dropbox.com/organize/how-to-use-dropbox-backup, however, those files and folders backed up wont appear on the computer. They are just online in a separate backup area.
Mark,
I was working with my new employee today and we moved all of her files to the hard drive so that when she works in drop box, her work will automatically update the file on her hard drive too. We created the folder on her hard drive that has the same excel files that are in her drop box but it was not updating those files when she edits in drop box. Is there something we have to do to hook up these two sets of files together? You said that dropbox creates a file on the local drive? Is there a special place where it does that? Or can we somehow tell it where the files are that we want updated?
Thanks again for any help you can give us to get this set up properly.
- Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hey moodyjudy0817!
When you install the Dropbox application on a computer, the app creates a folder named 'Dropbox' in "/Users/<username>/Dropbox".
Any files that are uploaded to the Dropbox account, will sync to that folder, locally.
Your employee's updates need to be made directly in the Dropbox folder, for them to sync to both that Dropbox folder (locally) and the Dropbox account online.
I hope this helps.
