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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!
Hi!
I also started migrating all my Data to my new Macbook Pro (M2) yesterday (from Macbook Pro Intel).
Although I had all my files (including the ones in my Dropbox-Folder) transferred via Migration Assistant, Dropbox keeps syncing for hours now and eats up my brandnew Harddisk.
I also have the hidden ".dropbox_bi" folder in my user folder. It uses more than 1 TB! It seems, that it is syncing the data of an external drive I have. It didn´t do this on my old Macbook and I could not find a way to stop it or deselect any option in the preferences in order to not sync this drive to my local harddisk...
What can I do?
Thank you,
Marcus.
Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorHi MarcusP73, let's jump right into this!
Could you clarify the app's syncing status as we speak?
As for your .dropbox_bi, is this where your external drive content are syncing to? If you access your Backup page, what do you see there? Feel free to send me a few screenshots, so I can have visual too.
Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there!
Hi Megan!
Thanks for the reply!
Syncing finished about an hour ago; fortunately I had enough diskspace left, because now I have that hidden folder consuming almost 900 GB.
On the backup page, I have two folders. Both showing the symbol for an external drive. One has 1.67 TB and the other 4.5 GB.
I have to add, that I have not connected this drive at the moment.
- Megan
Hi MarcusP73, thanks for your speedy response!
Can you let me know the exact path of the .dropbox_bi. folder? Any screenshots are welcome!
Also, could you right click that folder and then Get Info to see the full size on disk?
Now as for the external hard drives, you earlier mentioned that you wish to disable that feature. Can you try the steps mentioned in this Help Center article, and let me know if they help?
Hi Megan,
the .dropbox_bi folder is located directly in my main users directory -> Macintosh HD - Users - Me
Full size on disk is: 867.167.728.936 Byte (867,34 GB auf dem Volume) für 14.981 Objekte
The Help Center article did not help; I unchecked the backuping of the external drive, but the hidden folder on my Mac still remains unchanged... Can I simply delete it?
Yes, please do so! Do you have my eMail-adress?
I am also having this issue described throughout this thread. Dropbox is downloading the entire contents (802 GB) of an external drive backup to a "(restored files)" folder within the hidden dropbox_bi folder. Currently at 520.5 GB and only 170 GB of local hard drive space remaining (dropping by the second). Backups were working fine until my local drive space started disappearing. Only noticed today.
Not expecting much in the way of solutions here, but figured I'd add to the list of users experiencing this problem.
- Jay
Hi laserbeameyes, I'd recommend getting in touch with the support team directly on this matter, as they'll be able to investigate it in more detail.
- Hi, I tried to wait for help from the support team as well. It turned out, that they were not much of a help. They were either clueless or understaffed. Responses took forever and in the end only delayed my decision to stop Dropbox-Backup completely and then erase the hidden folder from my local drive. It seems to be a serious bug, that external drive backups get copied to the local drive.
I need the same thing emailed to me
I just had the same problem also. I have been using the drive Backup feature to upload the contents of several external drives holding mostly archived content and measuring several terraBytes in total over several drives. I use Dropbox for my business and am allotted 10TB in total storage space. My team folder in comparison is "only" a couple hundred gigs.
My new travel laptop has a 1 terraByte SSD and I just noticed the drive was full and no longer syncing to Dropbox. I viewed my file storage and it could only identify about 300 gigs in ALL files. I shifted everything in my Team Folder to online only and then started deleting everything I could, but it made no difference. Something was eating up ever more drive space even as I was deleting or offloading files by selective sync.
So I then toggled hidden files on and found a dropbox.bi file with over 800 gigabytes in it . It is a container file and within it were folders named for every backup disk I had created. I HAD NO INTENTION OF MY NUMEROUS DRIVE BACKUPS BEING MIRRORED ON ANY COMPUTER, LET ALONE MY LAPTOP! Whoever wrote the code that introduced these files onto my laptop needs a head check. It makes zero sense to mirror my uploaded archive data back down to a computer connected to Dropbox, and this caused me immense trouble for over a week before I identified the problem.
I simply deleted the files in a hidden subfolder inside dropbox.bi called DropboxBackup, and this caused Dropbox to stop sync'ing, despite no LOTS of free disk space, and display warnings at me. Multiple restarts solved the sync problem and now I find myself watching that dropbox.bi for changes in size. I feel like it's a cancer in my computer! Why is it even there?- Walter
Hey Chatterbox - thanks flagging this with us.
Just to make sure we're not eh same page, could you send us a screenshot of how this file looks on your end and clarify your computer's OS version and the version and status of the Dropbox desktop as shown in your menu bar?
Apart from that, can you let us know if you're currently using or used the Dropbox Backup feature in the past perhaps?
Any additional information is more than welcome!
