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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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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.
Would the Home folder and Library folder be two different things?
Ie., could the Library folder be stored on the internal hard drive, while the Home folder be on the external hard drive?
David, Of course Dropbox could support external drives as they did before today OR other cloud storage solutions continue to do (sync.com, icedrive, pCloud). Lets be clear that this is a design choice by Dropbox.
There are also unknown unknowns. Dropbox is a kernel extension, which may or may not handle the fact that /Applications/Dropbox is now not on the same disk as ~/Library/ correctly - depends if they had the foresight to envisage this use case, and how it's coded.
We're going to need to test it - and per my message to DB - ideally THEY should be doing that for us."Lets be clear that this is a design choice by Dropbox."
I'm not so sure. This previous thread about this (which someone sent me earlier today) implies Apple is slowly forcing all the streaming companies to do this - OneDrive already made the change a year back, and now has a workaround.
Looks like an Apple thing not a Dropbox thing. (Note the mention of Ventura is a red-herring, this affects Monterey too).Businessman994 could try it, but Dropbox traditionally hasn't handled symbolic links well (understatement).
Has anyone got onto Apple about this?
