Forum Discussion

franzanth's avatar
franzanth
New member | Level 2
8 months ago

Why did the sync status of my files changed to online-only all of a sudden?

I've been a Dropbox user since, gosh, who knows when. Suddenly, at some point this week, my default state switched from available offline to online only. I don't recall upgrading my OS or making majo...
desktop
Storage space
sync
Nancy's avatar
Nancy
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
8 months ago

Thanks for posting on our forum today, franzanth! 

Do you remember how much available hard drive space you had at the time perhaps? 

This will help me assist you further.

Let me know once you have more info.

  • franzanth's avatar
    franzanth
    New member | Level 2
    8 months ago

    Thanks, Nancy! I'm not sure actually, the notification came out of nowhere. Based on how many files suddenly disappeared from my machine, I'm sure it was at least 50+ GB

    • Nancy's avatar
      Nancy
      Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
      8 months ago

      I see, thanks for clarifying. One more thing I’d like to ask; are you, by any chance, running the Dropbox desktop app on File Provider? Had you made your files available offline by manually right-clicking on them and selecting the relevant option from the menu?

      In general, if you're on File Provider, and you start to run low on hard drive space, it’s expected behavior for the app to switch your files to online-only, in order to prevent you from having issues with file syncing later on.

      Since it’s hard to tell now for sure though, please let me know if this occurs again and your hard drive space is not the issue.

      • franzanth's avatar
        franzanth
        New member | Level 2
        8 months ago

        I just checked, and your diagnosis is spot on, thank you!

        What's the hard drive space threshold that triggers this switch? Just so I could prevent this from happening.

        I know your team have a lot of things to consider, but personally, I'd appreciate the switch to not be automatic, or at least come with a prior warning. With my slow internet, having to partially redownload my missing recent files, back them up physically, then reactivate the online only toggle bit by bit so I don't trip that threshold by accident is a multi-hour task. Hopefully this perspective is worth considering.

        Thanks again, really appreciate the explanation!

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