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Hidden .dropbox_bi folder storing 87GB of files locally!
Hi, I've just recently set up a new Dropbox Professional account. After installing the desktop app on my Mac I also set up a backup of my external SSD, which completed successfully yesterday. Sta...
Hi bea1356, if you're still being affected by this, please try the following steps:
- Navigate to https://dropbox.com/backup/all. You should see a page listing all of your active backups.
- Any affected external drive backups will have an adjacent icon indicating that there are restored files.
- Turn off automatic backup for each of these backups from the backup management UI:
- Open the Dropbox tray on your computer.
- Under “Sync and backups”, click on the affected backup. You should now see a page for managing the backup.
- Scroll down to the “Adjust settings” section.
- Find the “Automatically back up drive” slider.
- Turn the slider to off. This will pause automatic backup.
- Repeat for each affected backup.
- You should see free space on your computer start to go up.
- Wait until free space on your computer has stabilized. This may take 30 minutes or more.
- Turn on automatic backup for the affected external drive backups from the backup management UI.
- Open the Dropbox tray on your computer.
- Under “Sync and backups”, click on the affected backup. You should now see a page for managing the backup.
- Scroll down to the “Adjust settings” section.
- Find the “Automatically back up drive” slider.
- Turn the slider to on to resume automatic backup.
- Repeat for each affected backup.
- Return to https://dropbox.com/backup/all
- In the affected backups, you will find a folder containing any restored files. Verify that your backup already contains the files in this folder, then go ahead and delete it.
Keep me posted with any updates!
I had the same problem than you all and posted a previous message in this flow.
4 weeks later, I had several contacts with Dropbox.
They advised me to restart the backup, then restart the software, then reinstall the whole Dropbox software.
I did it and tried to restart the backup.
1. No link was done with the previous backup. That means that the program planned to restart from zero and upload 1.2 TB from zero. 😞 😞
2. After several days trying to restart the process, the software is still analyzing the hard disk and found the third. In the meanwhile, it haven't started to upload anything and so, is still blocked to 0%
This is a BETA version of the program and we understand why. It's not working correctly and causes a lot of problems.
Hannah replied "I'm glad the issue got resolved" although I only succeeded to use my computer correctly. Never the software was working correctly.
As Anwick wrote : "Come on Dropbox, this is going on too long whilst waiting for a decent solution."...
It's a pity to have the "Dropbox" name stuck to it because the standard software is working so well that I haven't thought that I was going to encounter so many problems with this Backup functionality.
After several weeks of exchanges with different people of the Dropbox assistance, my problem has not been solved at all.
My case in a nutshell :
As many of other people, I had a big problem with my local hard drive completely filled in because of Dropbox Backup.
I solved this problem myself and now I have the control back on my own computer.
But I wanted to restart Dropbox Backup since I paid for an extra disk space only for that.
And, although I reconfigured everything, the software is taking days indexing my external disk (something like 30GB a day) but never starts to send files online.
After several contacts with support, I had to re-install Dropbox several times and the problem is not solved at all. The software refuses to send files online.
So this tool is useless and I asked for a refund of the extra disk space since it's useless. Indeed I'll have to use another tool if I want my hard disk to be saved online.
I just received an answer from a Dropbox expert and the provided solution concerns the disk space full. It's not the problem anymore ! So, this person didn't even read my case before answering !!
If you read this forum before using Dropbox Backup, don't use this tool !! It's not working properly !
Hi,
I posted several times in this exchange and I just wanted to update you about my case.
I had a lot of different Dropbox people assigned to my case.
Each time I had to reexplain everything.
The proposed solutions are always the same :
- deconnect/reconnect
- update the software
- reinstall the software
But it does not change anything. It does not work.
I finish with the same conclusion than the last time :
If you read this forum before using Dropbox Backup, don't use this tool !! It's not working properly !
- Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi Jean-Marc P, sorry to hear about that!
In regards to your case, do you have an active ticket with our support? If so, could you send it over to me?
Keep me posted!
I had a lot of tickets about this problem but the latest one is #20197408
- Megan
Hi Jean-Marc P, thanks for letting me know!
So, I did some digging, and it seems that the initial ticket (the one you sent me) was closed due to inactivity. I can also see that you responded some days later, but the ticket was closed.
Should I reach out to you anew, so I can re-escalate your case?
I received some replies on this ticket number and I'm still exchanging on it, so it's not closed.
I'm not complaining about not receiving any answer.
I'm complaining about the fact that none of the solutions is working and solving the problem.
My backup was blocked and was frozen.
After several attempts, it appears that after having:
- Deleted the whole online history
- Stopped all the current back-ups
- disconnected the hard drive and having reconnected it
There is a way to relaunch a new back-up.To make it work, it is necessary that:
- No previous backup is already present online
- I only connect my hard drive after Dropbox launched (in the past, the disk was already connected before the computer boot but it's not working anymore)
- I relaunch a backup starting from nothing (and therefore losing everything that had saved before - upload days and bandwidth for nothing)
- At least for the first backup, I never switch off my computer. It means that I had to keep it permanently on for 10 days!And then it works.
- Jay
Hi teroam, have you tried these steps to resolve the issue?
I've just deleted the hidden "dropbox_bi" folder that was planted in my user directory. All told it looks like 300GB of my primary M.2 was being constantly written to on boot up. Currently attempting to delete the Dropbox backup of my external drive that was occurring without my knowledge. The timestamp on the backup looks like it corresponds to a time when I unplugged and re-attached the drive, but I never received any popup or notification that backups would now be started for that drive. I am keeping the drive disconnected while cleaning up this mess for fear that the backups might start again (it was kicking off after reboot even with automatic backups disabled).
I don't know what kind of buggy nonsense you guys are up to over there but I never told Dropbox to backup any of my drives and it apparently uploaded 2TB of data to the cloud, filling up my available space and preventing syncing. Then Dropbox got into a loop of "conflicted copy" issues (probably because my allotted 2TB space had been ransacked by the unapproved backup) and decided to start downloading files that were already locally available on my E: drive to a hidden folder in my User directory on C: drive, putting my primary drive into a constant state of overflow. By the way, this hidden "dropbox_bi" directory is not even visible when "Show Hidden Files" is enabled in Windows 10. The only way I am able to interact with the directory is through git_bash commands.
So your beta backup sub-application;
- Sent my data to the cloud without prompting for permission
- Has been constantly writing data to an SSD with a limited lifespan, into a directory I could not view except through a third-party shell. An SSD I never authorized Dropbox to use for any purpose.
- Has monopolized my allotted cloud storage, preventing me from using Dropbox at all
It's been an hour now and the cloud backup of my drive has still not deleted, and the only sign of activity is a blue bar dashing back and forth along the bottom of my browser window under the text "Deleting Elements backup from Dropbox...". The 1.92TB backup size has not diminished. Dropbox is still prompting me to upgrade because I've run out of space. At this point I'm not sure I'll be renewing. Will I get to use Dropbox to sync files again or will this unauthorized copy of my data sit in limbo in the cloud forever?
I too had this problem with the huge file .dropbox_bi/DropboxBackup/external drive name
Like many before me.Now I have solved the problem relatively easily:
I stopped backing up my external hard drive in Dropbox/Backup and restarted the laptop the next day. Lo and behold, the huge file was deleted and I have enough space again on my local hard drive C with Windows 10.
I would be happy if this would help the rest of you too
... two days later
Unfortunately, the joy was too early. The .dropbox_bi file is back! ... and even a little larger than before (12.7 GB instead of 11.7 GB).
In '.dropbox_bi' there is the following subfolder:
'TOSHI 4 (recovered files) ('name of my notebook' conflicting copy 2023-09-21)'
Toshi 4 is the name of my external drive. The date indicates that the files were just created today.
Including the following subfolders:
'Backup iCloud Photos'
'Dropbox'The Dropbox-folder I backed up to the Toshi 4 external drive. However, this 'Dropbox' folder in the .dropbox_bi directory is only a small, incomplete part of the original folder.
Question: Can this be deleted?
I would also like to add: The backup automatically turned on after the restart and the progress of the backup (of the Toshi 4 external drive) is further advanced (now 79%) and the files in the folder mentioned above are no longer the same as with the last time.
Is it possible that this is the temporary storage for the files that still need to be uploaded? But why? The files are already in the external drive!
Luckily I still have 3 GB of remaining space on the system drive C, so I'm no longer in dire need, but I would be very happy to receive some helpfull feedback.
- Nancy
Hi Peter S.137, sorry to hear that.
Has your external drive backup completed so far? If not, please give it some time till the process is 100% done, and then let us know if you can still see the “.dropbox_bi” folder, and if it’s the same in size.
In the meantime, what I can suggest as a workaround, is to use selective sync to unsync some folders you may not need on your desktop app, or to right click on them and make them “available online-only”, so that you can save up some hard drive space on your computer.
Thanks, Nancy ... as you suspected, the “.dropbox_bi” folder disappeared when the backup was completed.
But it's not just me that was worried about this. This shouldn't happen because the files are already on the external drive, just like on the local drives, and shouldn't have to be duplicated!?
In any case, I'm glad the whole thing went so smoothly.
Unfortunately there is no reference to a clear solution in this thread. Are everyone affected now satisfied? How did they solve the problem?
