Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨💻? Find out how to check here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
Smart Sync and removing local files
Hello,
I'm attempting to convert my dropbox folder on my desktop to smart sync, so that I'm not storing any local files on my harddrive in order to save space. Currently, my folder has some local ...
Hi Grant W.1
So first and foremost, Dropbox is a sync solution, not a backup. When sync is turned on, it sync the local file to the cloud. If you delete the local file, it will also destroy the cloud copy. You can directly upload your files for storage using the web client https://www.dropbox.com/home and then that will be stored independently of your local files.
As for the status, if you click on the little dropbox logo in the system tray, it should give you the current sync status of your files.
Rich
Super User II
Super User II
MikeTyrrell wrote:
Instead you turn on smart sync and it seems like nothing changed. You try and delete your local folder and it wants to delete your online folder - dumb.
You set a file or folder as Online-only, and you're done. There's no need to delete the local files because the files are already removed from your local drive by Dropbox, and a marker is left behind. It APPEARS as though the files are there, so you can easily open them, but they are online-only and not taking up disk space (aside from a few bytes for the marker).
Also, dropbox isn't a backup solution?? It's a sync solution?
Correct. It is a file synchronization server that has some backup-like functionality. If all your after is a file backup service, use Backblaze, Carbonite, etc., as they're designed for backups. Dropbox is not.
so really we shouldn't count on our files being safe in dropbox because it's not really a backup solution.
Your files are perfectly safe in Dropbox. Just because Dropbox isn't a service dedicated to file backups, that does not mean your files aren't safe.
This is a more helpful answer than the previous one. Thanks for the clarification on the fact that it takes some time for the local files to be removed and this is done automtically. It's not clear in the explanation users receive or the answer provided in this post (until now).
Thanks!
