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Mistake! I assigned the desktop folder to the dropbox folder!
I have a win10 PC. In an attempt to include my desktop folder (50GB of files) in dropbox, I inadvertently moved the location of the contents of the Desktop to "E:/dropbox" rather than "E:/dropbox/De...
Walter,
I managed to sort things out. Here's what I did.
1. Disabled the wifi network adaptor to assure I would stay offline until finished.
2. I rebooted to safe mode.
3. My desktop/dropbox combo folder was on the E drive, so I created two temp folders on the root of the E: drive: TEMP DESKTOP CONTENTS and TEMP DROPBOX CONTENTS. To facilitate all the juggling to come, I moved everything out of dropbox to those two folders. Despite being about 800GB of stuff, moving the files happened immediately.
4. I couldn't relocate the (now empty except for system stuff like the recycle bin) desktop system folder directly to E:/dropbox/desktop - something about the parent-child folder relationship. So then I right-clicked on the folder, went to "Properties", then the "location" tab, and relocated the desktop to its default location on C:/
5. I then did the same process again to set up the desktop folder INSIDE the dropbox folder - created a new folder called "Desktop" inside dropbox, then used the dialog box to "locate" the folder inside the dropbox.
6. I then moved all the files from the two TEMP folders to their proper homes on the desktop and in dropbox.
At that point everything was where it needed to be. I rebooted and turned the wifi adaptor back on. The desktop and dropbox folders aren't literally the same folder any longer, my desktop with it's 50GB of files is continually backed up by dropbox, and the 750GB that live inside dropbox (including my documents folder) are back where they belong.
THANK YOU for your suggestions. Even though I didn't do things as you suggested, it got me to the answer. Dropbox is now busily indexing 30k files.
Steve
Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorYou could use selective sync to free up space while you go if needed Steve:
https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/selective-sync-overview
That being said, note that a screenshot of how your desktop looks like would be better so as to have a visual we can work on too.
Thanks for your cooperation.
By the way the reason I suggested moving files to a temp location, then replacing them later, rather than deleting them and letting selective sync put them back later, was to save the upload time for restoring 800GB of files. If my other plan is not viable I can still turn on selective sync on everything that "belongs" in dropbox, reshuffle my desktop folder, then turn selective sync off to allow dropbox to restore my local copies.
