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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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beenyweenies and UKD thanks for the info. I have a few Synology devices on a 10Gbe switch for storage and backup. Not having seen an official Dropbox app, I didn't think to look at Synology's own app. I've been swamped with work lately and haven't had much time to experiment with this (and I really messed up when I did!)
I moved most of my production to Windows machines back in early 2000, when buying a new pro Intel Mac didn't seem like a good idea. (Arguably, Windows is never a good idea... but that's another story.) I'd been waiting for the second generation of Apple Silicon before making the switch back to Mac. Now I've got these new machines, but a lot of the workflow I'd established while on Windows is proving to be difficult. At this point I'm using VNC to access a windows machine running Dropbox, where I move files to and from the NAS, and use the context features of the app there to copy links and paste them into Slack back on the Mac. It's a royal pain. Before leaving for a long weekend here I'm hoping to install the older version of Dropbox on the new Macs using some new external tb4 ssds just to get some of the old functionality back. If all else fails I can still VNC to a Windows machine. It sounds like Synology's app understandably wouldn't have any of the context functionality, so I'd still find myself going to another source (the dropbox website?) to grab links. None of this is optimum.- beenyweenies I’ve not really used it that much as it’s an archive drive. Some of my team have accessed files and they’re quite happy with it but we’re not using it on a day to day basis. Plus for me it’s by my desk whereas my guys are on the other side of the world. They’ve not complained and are pulling down files only if they need it. We do all kinds of work but video is the biggest as files individually can range from a few kb up to a a few hundred MB up to tens of GBs.
We used to use the Synology NAS’s when we were in the office over AFP/SMB and they were great, even with 12 people accessing them. I don’t know if I’d want 12 people accessing it via DriveSync on a constant basis though, especially as it’s at my home rather than an office, so apart from the constant noise I’d have my internet bandwidth throttled with the uploading. UKD Are you saying that you can now select which Dropbox folders/files are synced locally vs cloud with the Synology Cloud Sync? If so that's awesome, I don't own a Synology NAS yet, I was just going off of what I've read. I know you can manage users/file access with the local Synology tools, but as you said it's something many people would find to be not ideal.
Assuming you currently use a Synology system, how do you like it? I am firmly on the fence at this point, have many potential uses for it but just not sure about the read-write speed as I am a 3D artist referencing lots of large files into my projects.
beenyweenies that's kinda true but also not true. Synology Drive is now much better than it used to be but the downside is that it takes a large amount of effort to set it up with individuals and individuals access points etc etc. I use it for my company archive now of old files and to make my life easier I've just given my guys access to everything. Saves me a lot of headaches. You can do individual syncing of folders and files locally now but again it's much more difficult that say Dropbox is.
ms25 Synology NAS has a package called Cloud Sync, and I imagine many other NAS systems have similar options. The problem is that this is just a dumb pipe that syncs all files. Because of this you would lose key features, such as individual user access/privileges, the ability to determine which files sync locally vs being available in the cloud, easy right-click file sharing with external users, etc.
- Umm isn't the simple solution to use nas enclosures with Dropbox installed and connect directly to them with ethernet?
You can easily attach several macs at each location to the nas drive, which has the benefit of drive redundancy. I am now 3 folders away from finalising my upload to sync DOT com. Am so tired of Dropbox sucking the life out of every bit of memory my laptop has and killing my machine and turning the fans on all time.
3. More. Folders. Cannot wait to be free now.
And following up to the previous comments about Apple and Dropbox, I couldn't agree more. They are both horrible companies in their processes etc etc. Apple will deny that there is a problem and say it's a Dropbox problem and Dropbox are blaming Apple and saying it's them. Meanwhile the customers, the ones paying both these companies for their hardware and software and being royally screwed as per usual with no recourse as they both think it's the others problem.
It's infuriating and I have to say with the changes Apple has made to it's hardware I can only see this going down and even longer slippery slope.
ArthurPix I hear you. And I agree that Dropbox didn't handle this as well as they could have. I just wanted to point out that many other communities are going through this same thing, and Apple's lack of communication/responsiveness is making it difficult for these companies to plot a coherent course of action.
We should definitely hold Dropbox accountable, but we should also be voicing our opinions to Apple as it sounds like you have (bravo!). If the chorus of displeasure grows loud enough, maybe Apple will back off on this silly requirement that the CloudStorage folder must live on the local drive. A boy can dream, anyway.
