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Forum Discussion
Transfer to the Cloud without going through the Mac's hard drive.
How to transfer files from external hard drive without making a copy on the internal hard drive of the iMac? My internal hard drive is almost full. So I can't save the files that are on the external drive. Do you have any answer? Thanks!
6 Replies
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- Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hey Lamateur01, welcome to our Community!
You could always use our website to upload content from your external drive to your account online. However, you might need to break them in smaller batches.
Do you currently use our desktop app on your iMac? If you do, you'll also want to avoid syncing the content locally.
Let me know, and I'll be happy to give you more details.
Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there!
Thank you for your answer.
As you suggested, I send my files in small batches. I see that the files are transferred to the internal hard drive and then sent to Dropbox. The files disappear on the internal drive when the transfers are finished. This seems to work but very slowly despite my 1 Gb connection.
Does this procedure seem normal to you?
Best regards!- Megan
Hey Lamateur01, thanks for the update!
Do you use our app, or the website to achieve this?
When you say that the files disappear when the transfer is finished, do you mean that they are deleted?
I drop the files into the "Dropbox" tab in Finder. The files are copied to my internal hard drive. Then I right-click and choose the "store online" option. The files are then sent to the cloud. The files are then deleted from my internal hard drive but remain in the cloud.
- Nancy
Hey Lamateur01! Sorry for chiming in.
From what I understand, you’re using the “make online-only” option from the right-click context menu. Your files are already synced to the website (our servers) by that time; this option is to make sure they’re not taking up space from your local hard drive (the files should still be showing up in your Dropbox folder after that, but as a placeholder instead).
As for the speed of the upload/sync, keep in mind that, in general, uploading/syncing is slower that your internet connection, as it includes a few background processes that need to be completed (you can check this post for more details).
Other than that, everything seems to be working properly on your desktop app.
Thanks for your help. I think I'm starting to understand better.
I'll get back to you if I have any further questions.
