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Jon C.10's avatar
Jon C.10
Collaborator | Level 8
3 years ago
Solved

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-...
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  • BenDBX's avatar
    BenDBX
    2 years ago
    Hi Everybody,
     
    We’re excited to share that external drive support for Dropbox for macOS on File Provider is now available for testing as a beta feature. This is available to some users today and will be available to additional users on a rolling basis. In order to be eligible to test this feature, please follow the instructions in this Help Center article. 
     
    Keep in mind that participation in beta programs is subject to the certain terms and conditions. There are certain additional participation requirements:
    • This beta is only available to US-based users
    • You must be on macOS 15 beta
    • You must have an external drive that is APFS formatted and encrypted
     
    Please let me know if you have any further questions!
jakobsjobom's avatar
jakobsjobom
Helpful | Level 6
3 years ago

UKD Well, Sync has "solved" it by allowing users to use an old version of their app. "Sync is currently supporting an older version of our app. This app does not include the Sync Cloudfiles/ Dropbox SmartSync feature, but still allows you to change the Sync folder location to external drives."

 

Dropbox on the other hand states: "You can install the standard Dropbox desktop app on a new device and after the installation, you can choose to avoid the upgrade to the new version for macOS. Our team is working on a solution currently, but there is still no official statement or a time frame for a fix."

This I got from support chats with Sync and DB respectively.

UKD's avatar
UKD
Experienced | Level 12
3 years ago

jakobsjobom that's interesting because I know the Cloudsync feature is in beta at the moment because I'm using it. In fact all my staff are using it and the MacOS users they're using an external drive. The windows guys, also are on the beta app bu they're not affected by the Apple API.

 

Whilst we are limited in the features when right clicking a file and finder integration, like you get in Dropbox, I find we don't need more than what we get. Create a Link, Set cloud only and Set local. There's 1 other which is to Sync to vault but I have my own vault with my NAS's so I don't use that feature.

 

It'll be interesting to see what happens over the coming months but all this change is causing me certainly a lot of issues with regards to hardware upgrades. 3 of my guys are on 5 year old 27" iMacs so they need upgrading this year but without having a very clear decisive outcome from anyone as to what the future path is what do I get? 1TB drives or re-mortgage my house and go for 4TB drives?

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