Forum Discussion

oduibhir's avatar
oduibhir
Explorer | Level 3
3 years ago

Local storage decreasing when I set folders to online-only

I need to free up space on my iMac's local drive. I set one folder on my Dropbox drive to online-only and instead of freeing up space, I'm watching it slowly eat up the local drive. The folder I set ...
desktop
Storage space
sync
Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
3 years ago

The size and size on disk are the same, which means that nothing has become online-only yet (the size on disk should be smaller).

 

Could you check to see if online-only files on Mac is enabled on this page?

oduibhir's avatar
oduibhir
Explorer | Level 3
3 years ago

Hi Jay,

 

Thanks for sticking with me on this.... My settings had online-only files on Mac set to Off. I switched it to On and then logged off the user and logged back in again to restart Dropbox. Interestingly. while on my other user on the same computer, I noticed that the hard drive space stopped going down when the user with Dropbox was logged off. 

 

I logged back on to the Dropbox user and noticed that the icons saying the folders were online-only were gone. I watched my disk space for a little bit and noticed that it wasn't changing anymore, so I set the same folder to online-only again. Immediately, the available disk space dropped instead of going up. I checked the individual files in that online-only folder and they say they take up zero bytes. However, the folder that they live in still says it is taking up the same amount of space as before I set it to online-only. My hard drive is now down to 115 gb from nearly 200 gb when I first set Dropbox to online-only. The available space continues to drop, albeit more slowly than it was last week.

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hey oduibhir - sorry to jump in here, but, since you made some changes to the status of the files/folders, have you tried clearing the cache since you noticed this space discrepancy? 

    • oduibhir's avatar
      oduibhir
      Explorer | Level 3
      3 years ago

      Hi Walter,

       

      Good idea. I did try that. There was only about 52mb in the cache but I put it in the trash and emptied the trash. The change in my available hard drive space was minimal and is still dropping.

       

      Dropbox is now giving me messages that I'm about to run out of hard drive space. I'm loath to change any other Dropbox folders to online-only for fear that that will completely wipe out the remaining space. I have one folder on Dropbox that I haven't changed to online-only that has >43 gb in it. Would love to reclaim that space but...

      • Hannah's avatar
        Hannah
        Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
        3 years ago

        Hi from me as well, oduibhir.

         

        Can you try removing some large folders completely with selective sync, to see if that frees up their space?

         

        You can add them back later; folders you unsync through selective sync and then choose to sync them again, will download as online-only, so if you add them back, they shouldn't take up space.

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