Forum Discussion

Suzanne W.4's avatar
Suzanne W.4
Explorer | Level 4
3 years ago

Files on Dropbox are still on my hard drive, why?

The whole point of using Dropbox was to store my files externally from my hard drive to free up space.  Now it seems those files are still on my hard drive.  What is the advantage of using Dropbox ot...
FAQ
Storage space
Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
3 years ago

Hi Suzanne W.4, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

 

The Dropbox service is primarily to sync files between devices, and not to backup files offsite. This means that the files would remain on your machine, and deleting them from there would delete them from the site. 

 

Depending on your plan, you could mark files as available online-only, so they don't take up any space, or use the selective sync feature to remove entire folders from your Dropbox folder.

 

If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.

Suzanne W.4's avatar
Suzanne W.4
Explorer | Level 4
3 years ago

Thank you for your input.  How do I find out which plan I have.  Looks like those suggestions would solve my problem.

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.

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