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Why do shared files count against my space use???
Why are files shared with me counted against my space usage? Is this data counted twice? If someone who is sharing files with me is paying for this space, why should I have to pay as well just to acc...
dualice wrote:
Why are files shared with me counted against my space usage?
Because the files exist in your account.
When you have access to a shared folder, you're not accessing someone else's folder. You're accessing your own COPY of the folder within your account, and you need to have enough space available to hold that folder.
If you just need to view or download files that someone else is sharing with you, ask them to send you a shared link instead. A shared link is a view-only method of sharing and you don't even need a Dropbox account to access it.
Rich
Super User II
Super User II
tiffany3 wrote:
If these are separate COPIES (as pointed out in earlier answers) how do they sync? Do the edits appear on both or our COPIES on each of our accounts? Or do we have to re-upload or reshare somehow after each edit?
It's all automatic. If you make changes in a shared folder that you're a member of, every member of that share will receive the changed files.
Try not to think of a shared folder like a network drive in a corporate setting, where every person is pointing to the same set of files in the same location on a single server. With Dropbox, your files, including all shares you're a member of, exist in a local Dropbox folder on your device. The files in a shared folder are the same for everyone, but each member has their own local Dropbox folder with their own copy of those files. When you make a change to a file, the Dropbox app syncs that change to the Dropbox servers, the file is updated for each member of the share, and the the Dropbox app on their device syncs those changes down to their local Dropbox folder.
Huh, so everyone who needs to access a folder needs to pay to store it on their own local system?? Will this take up space on my desktop hard drive? Or all in the cloud? I'm a google drive user and having to upgrade a dropbox account just so I can edit some of my clients' files is a bit mind-boggling. And thanks for your quick reply above.
- Rich
tiffany3 wrote:
Huh, so everyone who needs to access a folder needs to pay to store it on their own local system??
If the folder is larger than the amount of available space in their account, yes.
Will this take up space on my desktop hard drive? Or all in the cloud?If you sync the files to your computer, yes, the files will use space on your local drive. You also have the ability to use items like Selective Sync or marking files as online-only so they don't take up local drive space.
I'm a google drive user and having to upgrade a dropbox account just so I can edit some of my clients' files is a bit mind-boggling.Google has other sources of revenue that they use to subsidize their cloud storage service and usually operate it at a loss as a means to bring people into their ecosystem. In fact, Google posted their very first profit for cloud services in Q1 this year. Dropbox has no other sources of income with which to prop up their storage service.
