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Mac slows down on starting with paid Dropbox.
I have to wait on my macs (27" and two 13" Macbook, three and four years old, newest systems) almost 10 to 15 Minutes until i can use other apps, as dropbox syncs so slow the list. After list is load...
Hello Jane,
I am sorry for not getting back after your detailed response.
I do use the System Monitor, but I couldn't put my finger on an instance when Dropbox itself (i.e. a process that clearly relates to Dropbox) would be hogging the CPU. I could see that the disk read / writes was pretty high, but I can't provide a good set of numbers. (That was part of why I never got back, I was hoping in vain to have the time to collect some numbers.)
It looks more like an issue of the way Dropbox and the the Mac's other processes (in particular, mds_stores which relates to Spotlight) interact.
In other developments, I enabled smart sync, and it sems a bit better (upgrading the memory to 64Gb might have helped, too). I do have a lot of files (2 million) but am only using a fraction of the total storage.
My ongoing peeve is that yep, that initial slow-down is still there. The mac is unusable for a few minutes. The other issue that is annoying is that Dropbox seems to spend a lot of time updating folders that I haven't touched for years. As a result, changes in files I do update don't propagate for a long time and I end up with lots of forked versions and occasionally lose work I thought I had saved.
I don't understand how the "sync this file first" feature is supposed to work. Having to click on them one by one by hand kind of defeats the purpose of cloud storage, doesn't it? I run simulations that generate many outputs. I have versions of papers that I want my coworkers to see. I have class folders with subfolders for each student, with further subfolders for their homeworks, etc. etc.
Yes, I could be more organized with my files, and perhaps take old folders off of Dropbox or stop syncing them. But that would require spending a long time sifting through years worth of stuff... again , I thought the point of cloud storage was that (1) it is available on different machines and (2) you don't have to decide what to do with old folders due to lack of capacity.
Jane
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox Staff
I do have a lot of files (2 million) but am only using a fraction of the total storage.
(1) it is available on different machines and (2) you don't have to decide what to do with old folders due to lack of capacity.
I have an update to my original issue. Following one of the user suggestions, I upgraded my (mid-2010 "cheese grater") Mac to SSD storage. Between that and switching to "smart sync" and online storage (whatever it is called, when the files are downloaded only when you use them) my problem is mostly gone.
Obviously, this might not work for everyone. In this respect I concur that upgrading your hardware is not a "solution" in the sense you would expect from the support / troubleshooting discussion group for a software product. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of the lack of a software type solution.
It is likely that someone who can't afford $2-3k to buy a new computer or spend ~$500 on SSD's and memory upgrades, will be also unable to afford a paid Dropbox account. It probably makes sense financially to let those broke and / or stingy customers fend for themselves (especially the ones with several million files).
But you never know, some kid in Finland might just be working on a cloud storage system that also keeps track of the metadata of your files on every one of your computers so it doesn't have to rebuild the database or whatever each time the user logs in.
- There is no solution other than upgrading your system to include an SSD drive that I can find. If you don’t like that than you can use Dropbox without the app.
Thank you Shaun S.10 for the info on upgrading the storage to SSD. As I mentioned, that solved the issue for me as well. Previously I had increased the memory to 64GB and that didn't make a lot of difference. Switching to online-only storage for most files also helped, but I think it was really the switch from HDD to SSD that did the trick.
This has been an issue for years with Dropbox. I guess they just have no idea how to fix it. I'm upgrading to SSDs on my 2012 MBP just to "reduce" the effect of this.
SSD is a really good idea!
Maybe this is the solution. Only the time to set up the new SSD with the old system is enormous.
where to find out how many files you have in Dropbox folder. I have a lot there (350 GB), but I don't know how many different files.
I have been suffering on both my Intel iMacs for years with the same issues. Takes about 15 to 20 minutes for my Mac to become usable while it waits for Dropbox to "startup" and then sync after.
Surprise, upgraded one machine to new M1 iMac and the process takes 30 seconds.
I wonder if anyone had to cahoones to delete dropbox and their dropbox folder, and then re-=download the entire filed and see if that fixed the issue?
