Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox đŸ‘šâ€đŸ’»? Find out how to check here.

Forum Discussion

Poindextrous's avatar
Poindextrous
Explorer | Level 4
7 months ago
Solved

Uploading a large file directly to the cloud and checking the status

I have a large, 165 GB file that my local computer can in no way accept into its Dropbox folder and then select online only. I have read that I can go Dropbox on my browser and upload a file directly...
Storage space
upload
  • Dell_Dropbox's avatar
    Dell_Dropbox
    6 months ago

    Hey Poindextrous​ 

    Thanks for your patience so far, its very much appreciated. We may have a workaround for you. 

    It looks like you may be on File Provider which doesn't support Move Dropbox. Instead, you'll have to sign out of Dropbox (in the app) and then select the external drive when signing back in

    Note: You will have to re-download your Dropbox when the move it to an external drive which could take a while.

    If you have another computer to use, you could:

    1. Use the new computer, set up Dropbox on the external drive with the large file. You can use selective sync to avoid downloading your entire Dropbox.
    2. Copy the large file into Dropbox and wait for it to upload.
    3. Now the file will be in Dropbox but not on your original machine which it can't fit on


    Try this out and let us know how it goes.

vladgasan's avatar
vladgasan
Icon for Dropbox Product Manager rankDropbox Product Manager
7 months ago

Hi Poindextrous​,

Thanks for reaching out. Uploading a 165GB file through the Dropbox website won't work due to the 50GB upload limit for web uploads. Since your file exceeds that, here's what we recommend:

  1. Temporarily move your Dropbox folder to an external drive. Follow the steps outlined here: 👉 Move Dropbox folder to an external drive (Mac)
  2. Once your folder is moved, drop your 165GB file into the Dropbox folder on the external drive. Dropbox will start syncing the file to the cloud from there.
  3. After the file finishes syncing, you can move your Dropbox folder back to your Mac by following the same step from the article. When prompted, you can select your existing folder on your Mac so Dropbox can reindex it without redownloading everything.
  4. To save space on your Mac, I recommend marking all files (especially the large one) as online-only, so they stay safely in the cloud without taking up hard drive space.

 

Let us know if you hit any snags along the way!

- Vlad

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

The Dropbox Community team is active from Monday to Friday. We try to respond to you as soon as we can, usually within 2 hours.

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X, Facebook or Instagram.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!