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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://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected-changes
Just confirmed this with DB support (see below). Gutted - been with Dropbox for years and our entire video team flow is based around it 😕
>Hi there, I read today that you are scrapping the ability to store the Dropbox folder on external disks, on OSX. I'd like to ask more about this please.
> Hello Jon, and thank you for contacting Dropbox Support. My name is Joseph, and I will be more than happy to look into your request, right away.
That is correct Jon, as part of the Dropbox for macOS update, the Dropbox folder must be located in ~/Library/CloudStorage.
>This is a showstopper for us, and will mean we have to move to another service. We have a large distributed team using DB for video work, no way it'll fit within internal drives.
Is there a workaround?
> I totally understand and I apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, there is no workaround on this as changing the location of your Dropbox folder is no longer supported by macOS.
>This change doesn't seem to have hit us yet - we're running a variety of machines inc Ventura
What will trigger its enforcement? Can we stay on an earlier OS or Dropbox version?
>The updates happening automatically every time the Dropbox app is restarting, for example if your device never restarts it should maintain the older version but we can't guarantee full functionality on older versions of the application.
>So what will happen - if we have a Dropbox folder on an 8TB drive and a tiny internal drive - will it try to clone stuff across and eat up the space? What's the mechanism?
>That's right, it will try to move the content on your internal drive until it has no space and gives you an error.
>Is Smartsync still supported? I.e. will it move stuff to being online only if it won't fit?
>It is, however it is now known as online-only.
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That is, I believe, correct, it still works for me on previous OS as long as you don't update Dropbox to latest version.
The version of Google Drive I have does no longer allow moving the content to an external drive, it now says "controlled by Mac OS".. there used to be a command line solution but I haven't tried that in a while. It used to work but I can't verify that it still does. I pointed to the command line solution earlier in this thread.
What about Google Drive. Has anyone tried to use it with an external drive?
So as far as I can see, anyone wanting Dropbox Synced to external volumes can be on Ventura and not use the new API. The Status Quo remains at least for now
I don't believe iCloud can use an external drive either. Plus iCloud is not good for professional users. I'm pretty sure documents don't automatically download. You have to initiate it each time.
Can icloud use the external drive?
TheMainOne Interesting. I'm still quite happy with Sync — whenever I've had a question for their techs, I've received a prompt answer, either same day or next day. However your complaint did strike a note in one sense, as there is no user community to whom I could submit problems. This is one aspect of DropBox that I really like.
Anyhow, after reading your comments, I checked out PC World's list of Best Cloud Services. I also checked the number of WorldWide Users for each platform. By far and away the most popular services are iCloud, with over 800 million users, and OneDrive, with about 500 million..
By contrast, the third party services are led by DropBox, with a staggering 700 million users. Sync.com says it has over 2 million "users and businesses," pCloud has 16 million users, and iDrive (which calls itself the world's most popular cloud service) has 4 million.
But who is the best? Well, PC Magazine hedges its bets, as you can see here: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-cloud-storage-and-file-sharing-services
Note that "Best Overall" is oneDrive, which has the distinction of corrupting every single PDF, pages, docx, and jpeg to which I once entrusted it. Also, DropBox, truly the world's most popular cloud storage service is never even mentioned! Nor is pCloud. I have given iDrive a whirl—at its amazing introductory offer of $15.95 for a year of 5Tb of data --and is far HATE the UI, which requires me to DOWNLOAD any file I wish to view. More later...
I thought the questions would nestle below the posts. I'm not escalating.
Escalating does not help at all. Done it two times. The same copypasted answer each time...
Hey everyone,
I can tell you that I wish this problem had never come about with the issues of having to use the primary drive. I would love to be a good and paying member of dropbox like I used to be.
And no, today I will not go further into my thoughts of the past.
I am looking up and looking forward. When I left a couple of months ago, I went to sync dot con. At first I thought I would like it. But their customer service is so bad it wasn't even funny. I would write a message and wait two or more days to get a very low level tech to ask me stupid questions and then I would wait three or four more days and still not hear back from them or from a high-level tech.
After a couple of months of dealing with this I decided that it was time to move on. So I started experimenting with other options.
What I found much to my surprise and happiness was pcloud dot calm. They are only a few dollars more however there's one big thing that they do that won me over. They do not throttle the speed at all. You can get all of the upload and download speed that your ISP gives you. At least that's in theory but I have found it is really fast. Even faster than what dropbox was.
There is a bit of a trade off. Sync dot con was fully encrypted. Now the good news is that makes it a very safe option. The bad news is that it makes uploading and downloading nearly impossible if you have much that you're trying to deal with. I got errors constantly. After a week of trying to upload 400 GB, I finally gave up.
Pcloud dot calm is unencrypted unless you really want encryption. Now if you buy a business plan like I did with three people, it comes with encryption. If you buy a lower level personal plan you have to pay extra for it. The good news is that it is a separate folder where you can put the things that are really important that you encrypt. The regular stuff you don't need to encrypt, don't. Things going into the encrypted folder or slow. Everywhere else is blinding fast with the service.
One more thing is that P cloud claims to be unlimited in terms of space. But if you look in their site or you ask them, they will say Unlimited in the business plan equals 2 TB per person and you need three. In our case, 6 TB is more than enough. You can remove storage from the other two and use it for central sharing and let the other people upload and download as they need. You can also ask for more when you reach about 90% of your allotted space.I'm on a Mac and I'm just thrilled with the service.
Just some ideas that I'm sharing here.
Does Sync work with an external drive? Are you using Ventura? Tks
