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Difficulty moving dropbox folder to selected location
Dropbox Version: 164.3.7907
OS: Windows 10
Issue: I am attempting to move my dropbox folder location from my D drive to my J drive
I used the "Move..." function
The process began...
Hannah
Thank you for the reply.
Recap and update:
I was trying to use Dropbox to migrate my files from one dedicated drive on my computer to another one, recently installed for this purpose. The process died partway through with approximately 1tb of files transferred.
I attempted to execute the move command a second time but received the error message that a dropbox folder already existed at the destination.
I sought guidance.
I was impatient to get the process complete, as it was impairing my workflow.
When I didn't receive a solution quickly (no reflection on dropbox or the community), I gave up on waiting, wiped the destination drive and re-started the process.
I received the same result - the process died partway through.
I then gave up on using dropbox to migrate the files and I am now in the process of transferring the files directly via Windows.
I am using COPY rather than MOVE in order to reduce the risk of data loss.
If/when the migration is completed, I plan to (hopefully) reset the dropbox pointer to the new location and wipe the old drive.
I believe/hope that the online copy of my files will update any files that were altered during the period of the migration.
We'll see what happens. I'll post again if I have difficulty with that plan.
Thanks again.
Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorHi HAL900O, thanks for the updates, and for your patience on this!
I'll keep an eye out, for any updates that you might have.
Next chapter in the saga.
I have now finished using Windows to copy all of my dropbox files from the old drive to the new one and I am requesting guidance in telling dropbox to link to the new file location.
I know how to get to preferences --> sync --> move.
However, that does not appear to be the correct method because it looks like that function expects to create the file structure itself starting with a root Dropbox folder "[name] Dropbox" (with .dropbox.cache and .dropbox files in that root Dropbox folder), then move the files itself, rather than just linking to a new location with pre-existing files.
Can you please help me how to tell Dropbox to link to my new file location?
Thanks
- Nancy
Hello from me too, HAL900O!
If you have an existing Dropbox folder on your J drive, what you can try is to reinstall the Dropbox app on your computer, which should allow you to pick this folder as the new syncing destination, without the need to create a brand new folder instead.
For more details on how to do this, you can also check Rich’s reply here.
Let me know if that helps.
Thank you for your suggestion but if I understood it correctly, it did not perform as advertised when I tried it.
The steps are basically to delete the dropbox app and reinstall it, then get a prompt asking where to link to.
When I tried that, the message I got instead was that the dropbox folder in the OLD location is missing. It asks me to either make it available again at the original location or give dropbox a new location to create a new download folder and re-download everything from the online backup.
I DO NOT get the option to choose an existing folder to link to.
This seems like just a different way to access the MOVE command that merely copies everything rather than moving a pointer.
Is there a way to simply change the location pointer/link?
Can you please help?
