Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users

I'm going to ask you because I can't seem to get back to the initial poster. 

I have quite a bit "in the cloud" in dropbox right now. I would like to move it all out of dropbox and onto my external drive. I am not going to deal with this (I'm in the process of upgrading a mac mini, that has 1TB SS to a mac mini 2 that will only have 512gb on it. There is no way everything I have in the DROPBOX can fit on the new mac mini). 

So, can I just drag everything into the external for now ... (It's 2TB) and I'll deal with either adding to the Apple iCloud or a different service. 

I don't understand. Won't we be able to store the files on dropbox online only and pull them down when needed? I actually JUST set up an iMovie library on Dropbox this morning. It took a ridiculous amount of time to upload an 800mb MB! film - it was a 30 second video for Pete Sake.  I'm in the process of upgrading to a macmini2 with only 512gb on it. I have a Mac mini 1TB that currently has 850 gb used. I need to already move everything and planned on working from a 2TB External. 

So, bottom line, can I just drag everything out of drop box - right now! - and stick in on the 2TB external, then either do Google or some other cloud service and be done with dropbox? 

I'm really confused over this. If I've got most of files and folders current set for DROPBOX online only how is this going to affect me? Does it? I don't have the Dropbox app on an external. ie it reads users>Homefolder>Dropbox>xyzfolder. So, if this is the case, when does this issue affect me. I'm certainly not going to choose "Okay" or "start" until I know what's going on. I want to "downsize" my 2014 Mac Mini (1TB) to a 2023 Mac Mini2 (512gb), and planned on putting the videos in dropbox and pull them down to work on them; do I need to now just put them on an external instead? I basically use DROPBOX for storage so how does this change my situation? Any insight is appreciated. 

On Friday, Dropbox posted this comment...looks like they are pausing the rollout until they implement a solution.

It doesn’t affect you.

This would be a deal breaker for my business use of Dropbox. I'd have to cancel my pro subscription, worth thousands of dollars a year, and move to another service. 

I hope you will solve this problem soon. This would be a deal breaker for me and my business and I'd need to cancel my pro account. 

While Dropbox works on making external drive support official, as KzDbx kindly informed us about, I'd like to share an insight that was given to me by one of Dropbox Germany's support agents, Stephanie, who I asked for help with a concern I had regarding moving my Dropbox folder to an external drive, and not wanting to have to download all files again.

The solution she gave me seems to also be relevant to all those of us who already have all of our files on external storage and want to keep it that way...I re-wrote her instructions to hopefully be more clear:

• Quit the Dropbox client
• Download the newest client from http://dropbox.com/downloading
• When installing it, it may have the option "All Files Offline" greyed out (not enough disk space), so continue with "All files Online"
In the next step, choose "Advanced Options" and point the location of the Dropbox folder at your current location (the root of which your Dropbox folder resides in, not the Dropbox folder itself!)
• Dropbox will start and re-index all of your files, without downloading them again, which could take a while, depending on the number of files in your Dropbox

Once finished, your Dropbox folder will be on your external storage and, according to KzDbx, remain there until Dropbox finds an official solution.

Now stop threatening Dropbox with cancelling your subscriptions...they are obviously aware of how important this issue is, and can't afford to fall behind other cloud storage providers who are supporting external storage already!

Thanks KzDbx for letting us know, and please ask your overlords to do a better job communicating your progress to us foot-soldiers.

I agree, this is an absolute disaster. I also raised this question with the Dropbox support today and they told me that even existing setups with external hard drives will be migrated to the internal drive by May 2023 at the latest. This will be a show stopper for our business.

We are considering setting up an emergency backup solution based on an old fashioned local file server. However, I have learned that Apple has also removed AFP support and now forces people to use Apple's extremely buggy SMB implementation, that causes many issues especially with Adobe software and messes up access privileges all the time.

What a mess. We are in 2023, have had a working cloud solution for years, and now, we are back in the 90's.

The known issue introduced in macOS 12.3 and regarding access to online-only files from 3rd party apps, is a disadvantage, but it can be eluded if you have a large external drive and make all the data needed available offline.

Really, I don't know what to say. This also goes to Apple who thinks it needs to lock down Macs just like their iPads. iPads can hardly be used for productive purposes because of the massive limitations in iPad OS. Now, it seems Apple tries to do the same to MacOS. These are no good prospects. Not at all.

I am very curious what solution dropbox will offer. With  over 300+ TB data on dropbox, it's quite important feature for us.