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jrlbell's avatar
jrlbell
Helpful | Level 7
3 years ago
Solved

Moving or Copying Dropbox To Another Computer

I just moved 80 Gbytes of Dropbox folders and files (not that much really) to my new computer. First I copied them to an external hard drive. Then I installed the Dropbox application on the new compu...
desktop
sync
  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    3 years ago

    Hey jrlbell, there are some steps you can follow, so that the application doesn't sync your Dropbox files, but only indexes them.

     

    This however would require to have your Dropbox files already on your new computer and not on an external drive.

     

    These steps are:

     

    1. Rename your existing Dropbox folder to "Dropbox (old)" or similar. 
    2. Install Dropbox and select the location that you want for the Dropbox folder. 
    3. When the installation is finished, Dropbox will immediately start to sync. 
    4. Pause syncing or exit Dropbox. 
    5. Move only the content of "Dropbox (old)" into the newly created Dropbox folder. When the move is complete, and not before, resume syncing or re-launch Dropbox.

     

    This should cause the app to index the files, instead of redownload them. 

     

    I hope this helps.

ajhuff's avatar
ajhuff
Helpful | Level 6
2 years ago
I understand that there is only one Dropbox folder. But now everything is on my new computer. Some of the old folders still exist many have now moved to accommodate other folders from other partitions on the old computer. Point is none of the folder structure on the new computer matches the old, so it doesn't match what Dropbox has in the cloud.

In essence I want to start over.

-AJ
Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
2 years ago
ajhuff wrote:
In essence I want to start over.

You have two choices then.

 

Install Dropbox on the new computer and let it download everything that's stored in your account. This will match how your Dropbox looked on the old computer. Once done, reorganize the files to match whatever structure you need and those changes will sync back to Dropbox.

 

or

 

Delete everything you have in your Dropbox account online, install Dropbox on the new computer and then move the folder structure you have on the new computer into the Dropbox folder and allow it to sync.

  • ajhuff's avatar
    ajhuff
    Helpful | Level 6
    2 years ago
    OK thanks.
    I'm not happy with how I set things up before so I think option 2 might be the better choice. But I'll explore the first option as well. Thanks!

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