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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.
Standard Dropbox file sync seems to be working fine, and the Dropbox app says everything is up to date, but for some reason I now have a new hidden folder under my Mac user folder called .dropbox_bi. That folder is storing 87GB of files on my primary SSD, apparently related to the 220GB of data backed up from the external SSD.
Is this my life now? Or is there some way to recover that massive waste of precious primary SSD storage space?
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!
92 Replies
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- Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
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.
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
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!
