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dups2788's avatar
dups2788
Explorer | Level 4
4 years ago
Solved

I uninstalled Dropbox from my computer, but the Dropbox folder still takes up space on my hard drive

I use to have a dropbox account (using company email credentials) from a company I have worked for before and now after leaving the company and unistalling dropbox, my Win10 is still saying I have ar...
desktop
Storage space
  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    4 years ago

    Hey dups2788, thanks for joining our Community and happy Monday!

     

    Uninstalling the Dropbox application, won't actually free up the space the Dropbox folder is taking up.

     

    But if your computer has been unlinked from the account and Dropbox is uninstalled, you can delete the Dropbox folder from your computer, to free up that space.

     

    The discrepancy is probably because you used to have most files set to online-only in your Dropbox folder.

     

    That would turn them into placeholder files, with no physical size.

     

    I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any questions.

Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
4 years ago

Hi dups2788, as Rich states, Windows knows the actual size of the files, and the size it should be.

 

When the desktop app is uninstalled, moving the folder wouldn't download the full 800 GB of files, only the files currently local on the machine.

emelon8's avatar
emelon8
Helpful | Level 6
2 years ago

Hi Jay, I am still having issues with this. I unlinked my personal and work Dropbox accounts from my computer and uninstalled Dropbox. Now I'd like to copy the two Dropbox folders (size: 4.44 TB; size on disk: 292 GB) to an external hard drive. When I try to copy the folders over, Windows thinks they're too big to copy to the external hard drive (free space: 3.33 TB). I don't care about copying the files that were stored online at the time I unlinked them, just the locally stored files. How can I fix this and copy just the 292 GB of local files?

  • Nancy's avatar
    Nancy
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    2 years ago

    Hey emelon8! Can you right click on each one of these two Dropbox folders, and send me a screenshot of their size? 

     

    I’d also like a screenshot of the error message you’re receiving. 

     

    Let me know when you’re ready.

    • emelon8's avatar
      emelon8
      Helpful | Level 6
      2 years ago

      Personal Dropbox Folder

      Work Dropbox Folder

      Error Message

      • Nancy's avatar
        Nancy
        Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
        2 years ago

        Thanks for these screenshots! From what I understand, your external drive calculates the original size of these folders and not the actual size that the files are taking up from your hard drive. 

         

        Instead of copying the entire Dropbox folders to your drive, can you open them instead and try to manually copy the content you wish to move over? Does that help?

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