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Jon C.10's avatar
Jon C.10
Collaborator | Level 8
3 years ago
Solved

Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users

In case anyone's unaware... if you're a Mac user storing your Dropbox on an external drive, you'll shortly lose that ability.   https://talk.tidbits.com/t/dropbox-drops-support-for-storing-files-...
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  • BenDBX's avatar
    BenDBX
    2 years ago
    Hi Everybody,
     
    We’re excited to share that external drive support for Dropbox for macOS on File Provider is now available for testing as a beta feature. This is available to some users today and will be available to additional users on a rolling basis. In order to be eligible to test this feature, please follow the instructions in this Help Center article. 
     
    Keep in mind that participation in beta programs is subject to the certain terms and conditions. There are certain additional participation requirements:
    • This beta is only available to US-based users
    • You must be on macOS 15 beta
    • You must have an external drive that is APFS formatted and encrypted
     
    Please let me know if you have any further questions!
ArthurPix's avatar
ArthurPix
Collaborator | Level 10
3 years ago

Bluebicycle This is ingenious and I have just enough Synology chops to MAYBE make it happen between my NAS and my external drive. But OMG the things that could go wrong! I don't have enough Synology chops to be confident that I'll always get it right, and I don't have as much faith in my knowledge of Cloud Sync as I do in handling Dropbox directly.

 

Bottom Line: I simply can't entrust my data to this solution. It would be much easier to switch cloud services, if only I could find one that I trust to keep supporting external drives.

  • Bookpast's avatar
    Bookpast
    Helpful | Level 6
    3 years ago

    What!?  I don't know how I didn't hear about this disaster until now! After using Dropbox for nearly two decades on external drives with no issues, THIS makes Dropbox entirely useless for me. Apple doesn't even MAKE internal hard drives big enough to support this change.

     

    PLEASE Dropbox find a solution to this ASAP. If not, it's goodbye.

  • UKD's avatar
    UKD
    Experienced | Level 12
    3 years ago

    Bookpast sadly the response you will get from @Dropbox will be "we have smart sync" so you don't need that much space. Like most of us we're scrambling to find a better solution and one that will support external drives. Dropbox just blames Apple for all of this and whilst I can't say that Apple is blameless in this whole scenario I'm sure it can't be all their fault.

     

    But then again who knows. Nobody tells us anything and they're not going to admit their own inabilities are they!

  • ArthurPix's avatar
    ArthurPix
    Collaborator | Level 10
    3 years ago

    Bookpast Amen. And you have raised a concern that I didn't even think about — what happens when your Dropbox needs exceed the amount of internal storage that it's possible to buy? Smart Sync is all well and good for unimportant stuff, but I NEVER want my data to be accessible ONLY when I have a decent internet connection.

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