Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨‍💻? Find out how to check here.

Forum Discussion

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-...
desktop
dropbox business
Storage space
  • 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!
TRO_Berlin's avatar
TRO_Berlin
Helpful | Level 6
3 years ago

The Idea of a 10gbit local Server (linux based, running a proper normal version of Dropbox with the ability to sync to wherever you want) is like this:

 

The Server has a huge RAID Storage attached

It runs the Dropbox Software so our files are synced to Dropbox

This enables us to do HomeOffice from a MacBook with SmartSync

In our Studios we work via 10gbit Ethernet on the RAID Storage, which gets synced to Dropbox by the Linux client.

So no Dropbox on our Workstation Macs at all, only the 10gbit Connection.

 

We have the Dropbox Sync still working like this, the only thing we loose is all of the right-click menu stuff like sharing links, but you can do this from the web...

 

That's the idea if we never get a real solution by Dropbox for external Drives...

lozzarozza's avatar
lozzarozza
Explorer | Level 3
2 years ago

My client currently runs this way, but ultimately it's still really slow 10GB and very expensive to upgrade all the Macs to a higher bandwidth.  Local storage (externally) is much faster.  Plus NAS is giving issues for many adobe programs etc.  files disappearing and adobe not really supporting this solution either. 

  • BenDBX's avatar
    BenDBX
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    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!
  • mkaufman's avatar
    mkaufman
    Helpful | Level 6
    2 years ago
    Thank god!!!
  • mkaufman's avatar
    mkaufman
    Helpful | Level 6
    2 years ago
    Is it possible for me to read/learn the gist of how you pulled that off? Maybe keeping a super low res version in apple’s user/Library/CloudStorage and copying the high res version via your servers to my ext drive?

About Storage Space

Looking for help with managing the storage space in your Dropbox account? Talk to the Dropbox Community and get advice from members.

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!