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I told Dropbox to not backup an external drive; now I've changed my mind
The subject pretty much says it all! I'm on a Mac and I connected an external drive (formatted HFS+). A popup came up asking if I wanted to backup this drive to Dropbox and I said no. Now I'd like to...
- Hello!
I had reinstalled the app already (though Iâm not sure I did a full uninstall first) but in the end I had some spare time and so I transferred the files from one external drive to another then reformatted the drive so it would trigger a new request to backup. This worked. As a suggestion, it seems like there should be some manual way to tell Dropbox to backup a drive after originally indicating not to and not to ask again.
Thanks!
Hi Megan,
The app is definitely running as my whole computer is backed up and there is more than enough storage space. The issue is that the dialog box doesnât reappear after the very first time it popped up to allow me to configure external back up - not a sync issue. I just donât even have the option to set up sync.
The app is definitely running as my whole computer is backed up and there is more than enough storage space. The issue is that the dialog box doesnât reappear after the very first time it popped up to allow me to configure external back up - not a sync issue. I just donât even have the option to set up sync.
Iâve done all the suggested things like uninstalling/reinstalling the app, disconnecting/reconnecting the drive, restarting etc - but until the pop up reappears thereâs no way to set up the backup. Your help would be appreciated as this is obviously an issue affecting everyone and the âsolutionâ verified in this forum is actually more or less just to get a new hard drive which is ridiculous.
- Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi there, lyndallm! Happy Monday.
Can you let me know the storage capacity of your external hard drive and how it is formatted, please?I have the same issue with my NTFS external drive. As previous comments suggest, I deleted all hidden files from the drive. In my case that was only .dropbox.device In fact, I have tried all previous suggestions except formatting the drive which I find ridiculous and uninstalling the Dropbox app. Dropbox won't prompt me to backup the drive. I also noticed that the file .dropbox.device is regenerated every time I connect.
- MeganHi kmkonstantinidis, how are you today?
Mind sharing with me the drive's usage and capacity?
Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there.
Agreed, and I've just tried support and they simply do not have a solution and answered like the problem was affecting me so I shared the link to these posts here. The solution provided here is unacceptable. I won't format my disk and pray for Dropbox to pop a question? Dropbox should simply show the external hard drives along with the folders for backup (or not) so we could check mark them, under the backup option, in the preferences...
This is clearly still a problem and I've just had a useless conversation with live chat about it! I'm not even sure she understood the issue.
Come on Dropbox, I'm paying you ÂŁ700 a year so I expect something better than "how is your drive formatted" when that CLEARLY isn't the issue here!
