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Forum Discussion
Restoring to a new drive after failure w/ thousands of selective sync errors on my cloud
Generic PC Win 11 desktop
Windows 11
Latest version
Syncing Status: Up to date (no local files)
I've been paying for Dropbox since 2012 - I have .75 TB stored in my Dropbox. It usually works well - I had a hard drive failing and was not able to move my Dropbox to another drive after 3 days trying with the move feature, so I used the 'security' feature to remove Dropbox and local files from this machine. I then attempted to re-sync, and now there are *thousands* of files in my Dropbox cloud that are marked as selective sync errors. Manually merging them one by one is going to be an enormous hassle. I'd like just to use the cloud version of my work, but have to remove the selective sync conflicts that are spread across many, many folders, zip files, etc. Any suggestions? Right now, I have everything set to the cloud. My Dropbox after reinstall is successfully set up on a new working 3TB drive - but it looks like Dropbox didn't remove all of the old drive files though I removed this machine and asked it to delete. TLDR: How do I resolve thousands of selective sync issues and just use my cloud storage version as the authoritative source? Is there a tool for this?
3 Replies
- Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi ThriceFive, sorry to hear about that!
When it comes to selective sync conflicts there's not an automated way to handle them.
Here are some steps and future insights to prevent this from happening again.
If you need something else, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help every step of the way.
Thanks Rich that is helpful. If I look in my cloud data though there are many files that are tagged with 'selective sync conflict' if I re-download my files won't I then have all those selective sync conflicts (hundreds to thousands) to manually merge still?
- Rich
Super User II
... it looks like Dropbox didn't remove all of the old drive files though I removed this machine and asked it to delete.
That only works if Dropbox is able to run. If you had a failing drive and Dropbox wasn't able to work correctly, then it wouldn't be able to remove the files. Either it wouldn't receive the signal from the cloud to do so, or it would receive the command but fail due to the failing drive.
I'd like just to use the cloud version of my work, but have to remove the selective sync conflicts that are spread across many, many folders, zip files, etc. Any suggestions?
Uninstall Dropbox, rename the existing Dropbox folder to Dropbox_OLD or similar, then reinstall Dropbox. Don't try to use the existing folder and Dropbox should just create a new folder and download everything from your account in the cloud.
