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Forum Discussion
Dropbox Backup won't recognize external drive on MacOS Sequoia 15.2
Hello,
I cannot get my external drive to show up in the "Add a backup" section of the Dropbox Backup. I've read a bunch of posts about this issue and it seems like there is no solution. Some have said erasing and reformatting their drive worked (an absurd "solution"), but that hasn't for me. I've also done all the other suggestions that Dropbox support and others have put forth to no avail.
Is there really no fix for this? Apparently people have been having this problem for years now.
Thanks for any info or help.
17 Replies
I forgot to mention I'm running macOS Sequoia 15.2.
- Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi there frostyandroid - sorry to hear you're having issues with this.
Have you ensured that your drive is meeting the requirements outlined here?
Let me know more and we'll take it from there.
Hey Walter, yes it's formatted APFS (NOT encrypted).
I had originally seen a notification from Dropbox asking if I wanted to backup the external, and I clicked "no" because I wasn't sure at the time. Later I decided to backup some folders on it, but couldn't get Dropbox to recognize it again. I reinstalled Dropbox, unplugged and replugged the external, and still nothing. Then I erased and reformatted the drive, and still nothing.
- Hannah
Hey frostyandroid, try going to your Dropbox preferences > Account tab and press the Option/Alt key; this should bring up some additional options.
There should be a file system warning one, so try to enable that and then reconnect the drive to see if that helps.
Hi Hannah, that didn't do anything unfortunately.
- Nancy
Hey frostyandroid, let me jump in here, too. Can you clarify the current syncing status and app version of your Dropbox app?
Hi Nancy,
Sync status: "Everything is up to date"
App version: v215.4.7202
Any ideas or am I SOL? I'm on an M4 Pro Mac mini if that info is needed.
- Nancy
Hey again, frostyandroid! Can you tell me what’s the total capacity of the external drive you wish to back up to Dropbox?
Also, after checking your post again, I see that you mentioned this in your original post “I cannot get my external drive to show up in the "Add a backup" section of the Dropbox Backup”; you were referring to the Backups tab of your app preferences (that’s mentioned here), correct?
