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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://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected-changes
Just confirmed this with DB support (see below). Gutted - been with Dropbox for years and our entire video team flow is based around it 😕
>Hi there, I read today that you are scrapping the ability to store the Dropbox folder on external disks, on OSX. I'd like to ask more about this please.
> Hello Jon, and thank you for contacting Dropbox Support. My name is Joseph, and I will be more than happy to look into your request, right away.
That is correct Jon, as part of the Dropbox for macOS update, the Dropbox folder must be located in ~/Library/CloudStorage.
>This is a showstopper for us, and will mean we have to move to another service. We have a large distributed team using DB for video work, no way it'll fit within internal drives.
Is there a workaround?
> I totally understand and I apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, there is no workaround on this as changing the location of your Dropbox folder is no longer supported by macOS.
>This change doesn't seem to have hit us yet - we're running a variety of machines inc Ventura
What will trigger its enforcement? Can we stay on an earlier OS or Dropbox version?
>The updates happening automatically every time the Dropbox app is restarting, for example if your device never restarts it should maintain the older version but we can't guarantee full functionality on older versions of the application.
>So what will happen - if we have a Dropbox folder on an 8TB drive and a tiny internal drive - will it try to clone stuff across and eat up the space? What's the mechanism?
>That's right, it will try to move the content on your internal drive until it has no space and gives you an error.
>Is Smartsync still supported? I.e. will it move stuff to being online only if it won't fit?
>It is, however it is now known as online-only.
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Appalling. I really don't know what to say.
I have been using Dropbox for as long as I can remember, I have files in there from 2009 so let's say I started using it around then. Over 13 years
Sure it is not perfect, but I don't need to think about it, I just use it.
It is integral to my work and play. I have so many apps that use Dropbox to sync their preferences, watch folders with various rules and automations, other cloud services like Epsonconnect, various Wordpress sites backing up daily to it, the more I think about it the more the I worry.
I physically feel sick thinking about how much this is going to affect and break.
It doesn't make a difference, as there is no going back, we are being told what we have used for years is going to be taken away whether we like it or not.
And I do not believe for a second that such disruption and regression was unavoidable. Work it out, develop your own API or encryption, or do stuff behind the scenes that pushes stuff around, but do what it takes to not have to tell your customers what you are telling us now.
We should not get a popup saying "we are going to upgrade you now and that upgrade is going to break this this and this, and won't be able to do this this or this ever again"
Something as big as this should be apologetically announced, with ample time (at least 12 months) to sort things out to work with the changes, with the options to export all your data to another service.
Given the amount of work it will take to make Dropbox usable for me again, I will probably kludge something together myself that will perform the basics rather than continue to give you money
I know I probably don't make much sense with what I have written, but I am fuming, absolutely livid.
- I appreciate that Dropbox sees that this change is a significant problem (putting it mildly). What’s the timeline for an accommodation for Mac users? I can’t just have Dropbox taking hard drive space by surprise, with no option to stop it.
It’s shameful that longtime customers are finding out about this by accident in the forums. Quietly rolling out an experience this bad is a slippery slope. Just so I full understand where we are now. If I buy a new Mac this week (which I have to do) which will come pre-installed with Ventura, can I *currently* install my dropbox folder on an external drive, whilst Dropbox try & fix this messy situation? I sure can't afford to buy one with a 4TB internal drive at Apple prices!
Just buy 4TB or even 8TB internal Mac to be honest yes it's costly but so much more effective than having to rely on external storage cloud sync. External disks even SSDs are not an option for anything having to do with real-time sync such as heavy video editing, music production, AI and computational projects etc. (I mean in 2023, we're in the future already, not living in the 90s anymore lol which sometimes Dropbox feels like)
Also it's way faster (6000 MB/s - for the M1 anyway, Apple messed up with the M2 as SSD speeds went down surprisingly, so I'd wait for the M3 if you're not getting a M1 yet) than even the faster external SSDs like SanDisk which unfortunately as of today only reach more or less 2'000 MB/s (so I only use those as TimeMachine backups of the internal Mac drive) and are limited to 4TB (SanDisk is working on the first 8TB dongle but it's going to take a few more years I'm afraid as it stands :/).
I really don't know how you guys keep saying you rely on external drives to sync 10s of TBs of data as individual, professional or even more so as business with many people relying on external sources. Very unreliable in my opinion, even before the Dropbox upgrade / sync issue.
Just buy 8TB internal disks people and PLEASE DROPBOX FINALLY EXPAND YOUR PRICE PLANS FOR THE PRO PLAN 3TB (+1 extra max) IS WAY TOO SMALL I NEED AT LEAST 15/20TB OPTION to back up my entire data + some headroom just in case to be safe. Ready to pay 100+ a month for it.
NNNO MAC - WINDOWS 10
To solve this problem, is it possible to move your Mac 'User' folder to an external drive, instead of your root drive. I have done this back in the day with my old Mac Pro 2010 when I bought SSD's for the boot drive, I put the User folder on a 3TB HHD.
Moving your entire user account to an external drive is a bad idea. Consider laptops. How is that going to work?
That is NOT a real solution. I appreciate the thought.
Buying an 8TB internal drive is ALSO not a real solution for most of us.
And you greatly overstate the need for speed when it comes to drives. I have for 5 years done music on Minis including my current M1 mini, and I use an external drive for all media and samples. My dropbox folder is on that same external drive (SSD). It is completely a non-issue.
One might make an argument that video users might need this, but most video users I know use 10gbe or fiber and external RAIDS, not internal storage, at least in the corporate world. Even 8tb is not enough for a a lot of video projects, and what then?
Again, this is a dropbox issue and a problem which dropbox needs to solve. Google Drive has solved it.
I appreciate people trying to detail possible workarounds as I know people's hearts are in the right places, but let's be real about those solutions. They are not real workable solutions. Dropbox and any usable cloud service MUST support moving of directories to external drives. That's a full on absolute requirement.
..and again, Dropbox is doing a major disservice to us by marking this thread as "solved" when it is decidedly NOT.I am also having this problem with Google Drive! How has Google Drive solved this?
