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Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users
In case anyone's unaware... if you're a Mac user storing your Dropbox on an external drive, you'll shortly lose that ability.
https://talk.tidbits.com/t/dropbox-drops-support-for-storing-files-...
Unfortunately, it sounds like the change is being driven by Apple itself, not by Dropbox, which may mean that all alternative services face a similar limitation. If you continue to use Macs running Ventura or later, you may need to find another way to work or acquire machines with more internal storage (which a cynic might suspect as a reason for Apple to make the change).
From a Reddit user: "It is linked to your home user folder location. If you move your home folder to an external drive, dropbox goes with it. And for that matter, so do google drive, one drive, box etc."
This may be a solution - will require testing.
Further exchange with Dropbox support:
Hello, welcome to Dropbox support. How can we help you?>Hi there, I wanted to confirm something>Hello there Jon, and thank you for contacting Dropbox support. My name is Jackson, and I will be more than happy to assist you with your issue, right away.>Hi Jackson.I understand Dropbox going forward will no longer support storing the folder outside of the user directory. This means by default we can't store it on an external drive.(OSX)>A bunch of us are discussing this here https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Storage-Space/Disaster-Dropbox-removing-external-disk-support-for-Mac-users/m-p/659876#M10309>That is true yes it will be under Library/Cloudstorage>Someone on Reddit has suggested a workaround could be to move your Mac user directory (your home folder) onto an external drive. This would mean that ~/Library/Cloudstorage would be on the external drive.Can you confirm if this would work?>From my understanding, you would like to know if moving the whole user folder, would allow the Dropbox folder to be placed on the external drive.>Correct.>I am afraid I do not have definitive information about this workaround. The Dropbox folder, and the folders of other cloud services will have to be under that folder. If the folder is on the external drive, reasonably the Dropbox folder would also be located there>OK so we'll just have to experiment. I have to say given this will mostly affect business users, the fact there's been little notification or suggestion of workarounds (only a note I happened to come across saying that our data would be moved without warning) isn't very professional.(if you wanted to pass that back)We shouldn't be having to experiment with hacks, when we use this as a serious tool.>Ok! I will forward your suggestion to the team. The restriction is set by the macOS>Thank you.>And for us to give an official workaround, we have to be 100% sure that it will not cause issuesFor instanceHaving your Dropbox folder on the external drive is already riskySince if it failsThere is a chance of file loss>Perhaps the team could look into the workaround I'm suggesting and check it for ruggedness, and inform the community (e.g. on the link above)? There's a bunch of us paying thousands of pounds/dollars a year looking to jump ship to OneDrive (who have a workaround) or similar, and we REALLY don't want to.>I will make sure to forward it to them. I know that Onedrive is using a workaround where they symlink the folder to that locationInstead of moving it there>We use extended version history to mitigate for disconnected external drives btw. It's not practical to store the amount of data we handle on an internal SSD.And I know lots of other users are the sameWe're doing 4-8k video production>Understood. I will forward your suggestion to them, since the team looks for user suggestions when implementing changesAs per the suggested workaround of moving the Home directory on your Mac to the external hard drive, what would be the cons of such a move?
By using Dropbox our data is by default backed up in the cloud. So we are not worried about an external hard drive failing. We are more concerned about potential permissions issues and performance.
My understanding is that the Home directory just stores files and content, as opposed to Applications - which would still run off the internal hard drive.
"As per the suggested workaround of moving the Home directory on your Mac to the external hard drive, what would be the cons of such a move?"
If the external drive is an HD (spinning rust), then the primarily hit would be indeed be performance. If in addition you're on a laptop - well - you're now tethered to that external drive.
In my case, my external drive is a slow spinning (but reliable) 10TB HD. I'd not want to have all file caches and the like from ~ /Library/ living there. The OS and apps will be hitting that drive constantly. You really want that to be either the internal SSD, or an external thunderbolt SSD. Most of us can't afford a huge SSD though.
Has anyone lost functionality yet? If so, have you attempted to move your Home User folder over to your external? I found a great article on how to move your Home User folder but haven't tried it yet: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/01/25/how-to-move-mac-user-folder-to-another-drive/
Since my business and clients are all on Dropbox, cancelling the service isn't possible. Buying a new Mac with at least 1 TB of storage seems a bit pricey to fix this issue.
I have been preaching the gospel of Dropbox for decades and now they do this to the faithful. Shame on them.
You can install the entire Mac OS on an external SSD drive. Why not do that and then run apps, like Dropbox, off of it too?
It's not a real option to only run off an external drive when you need Dropbox use. Sorry, that's just kinda crazy.
dbox_ you really need to answer with your future plans for this. I'm about to come due for renewal later this month and would love to either move on or keep dropbox forever because you HAVE COMMITTED TO HAVING AN OPTION WHICH ALWAYS WORKS for external storage.
In the meantime it's working fine on the older non file-provider version, but I REALLY NEED TO KNOW if Dropbox is committed to a longer-term answer.
100% support this. Its been around a year now and its either time to be clear about supporting external drives on MacOS or its time to tediously move onto another service....
You can install the entire Mac OS on an external SSD drive. Why not do that and then run apps, like Dropbox, off of it too?
Why not start with that even the best external Thunderbolt drives are significantly slower than SOC SSD throughputs? My M1 Max's real world internal SSD speeds are ~3400 MB/s write and ~3000 read. A fairly pricey TB4 Sandisk G-Drive SSD manages ~2400 MB/s read/write. Change that to a USB-C Sandisk "Extreme" or Lexar "Professional" SL-600 drive and I get throughputs of ~1000 write and ~750 read maximum. Modern MacOS is designed to be booted off a fast, reliable SSD, and a jiggling cable is a huge fail point, end of story.
Well everybody thinks they have the answer. Find me a Mac with a 16 TB internal drive or more that will host all my video projects that I'm working on currently. Maybe then you'll have a point.
How about understanding others workflows before trying to solve it.
And have you seen the prices Apple is charging for large internal SSD?
This is an interesting idea. Crap that this could actually be the only solution. I have ran off external drives off and on over the years. mainly when I am doing an upgrade of the OS and want to test the new OS and essential programs etc. So in theory you could run the OS of the giant RAID drives, I mean this can have issues for laptop users who ever want to you know... be mobile. But if you did the install of the OS on the external drive then you would have all that space "internal" as far as the OS is concerned and on the correct drive etc. But not the best work around. But for static machines maybe this would be okay. Why do apple have to break something that is working so well for since it was getdropbox.com
