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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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Thanks for checking that out.. the big question for me, sounds like it will backup from an external drive which is helpful, but will it actually SYNC to another external drive if necessary? That would be a killer workaround you may have found if so.
Thanks for the info. Well I hope for Dropbox you won't ditch them for 1700 USD a year that'd be a shame 🙂
I have an extra question: with your 6 user system and unlimited plan, do you see a green tick on your external disk folders/files? How do you sync your 30-40TB of data across your individual computers and as a team, is it a local access for each of the 6 users from their computers to a large disk or RAID system?
I can't see the green tick on my shared external disk (I see the green tick only on my local /Dropbox folder) but the sync works though. Do you guys all see a green ticket in your Business system?
- shinbeth
Yes, all users see the green check when synced, or the blue sync icon as files are syncing. We use it for video editing but also for production documents. So for editors, they have the entire DropBox synced locally, where as a producer might only have the smaller document folders. It’s a great system so I’m hoping they continue to support it. But I’m on a trial at Sync.com now and it seems to offer a very similar solution, for just slightly cheaper, and does still allow for syncing to an external drive. So it turns out https://www.dropbox.com/backup/all shows the sync status and the tick there instead, I'm cool with that.
Pretty useful feature indeed Dropbox to be able to sync external drives.
Please don't change this feature on Mac please 🙂 the people here are right and I fully support them.
jmeredi2 I tested sync.com and while it is ⅔ of the cost for unlimited and has point-to-point encryption (which is far superior than what DB offers), it is much slower for up/down xfer. I suspect its partly because of the encryption key, but that's only a guess. They capped out at 40Mbps I think. Possibly much less. Might have been as low as 4Mbps. Can't remember exactly what the limit was but it would have taken over a year to upload our assets vs 2 months for DB.
Their security protocol is great tho. Government's have confirmed its okay to use at this time. DB is not an approved supplier tho.
We have 2.5Gb internet here so it wasn't an issue with our local connection.shinbeth that 'backup a drive' function is great, but it's not as flexible as the main tool. From what I understand, it doesn't allow control over folders and files the same way. Maybe I'm mistaken, but to restore the data locally, I think you would have to download the full drive? That's what the DB rep told me during our testing phase.
You can backup a drive, make changes to that drive, and sync for safety, but if you need to clear local drive space up, I don't believe that tool is a viable workflow solution. Also, there was some limits on size of drive and number of files in some documentation I read.
I see it as a smart way to backup camera cards, but I'd use the main DB tool for the actual post-production process between multiple users (clients, editors, director, sound-designer, VFX, etc).Happy you see the value of External Drive workflow. It really is powerful.
KyleKoch thanks for the extra info that's really useful.
Yes indeed it's not exactly the same and as flexible as main local 'Dropbox' indeed so I keep it more for extra 'lighter' data (videos, archives...) I wish to backup on my hard drive until Apple releases a local 16TB drive option which will allow me to transfer everything on the main local Dropbox. The same way I intended to do it with Google Drive or another cloud, but since I was never convinced by Dropbox alternatives, this way I can keep everything under Dropbox roof, even though for now it's not perfect, I feel safer not to lose any data if something happened to my extra hard drive.
For the main data for sure I keep everything on main local SSD because like you guys in the field of music/video production I know what you mean, those files are too big and when editing in heavy softwares my experience with external hard drives is that it's never as fast as and reliable as Apple's local SSD. And yes especially for clients you want to keep everything safe and without hurdle indeed.
So yeah nice to have this feature and at least I don't have to pay extra with another cloud service, and use a multi cloud mounter too, for the time being.
shinbeth the architecture of the machines I build tend to have a fast SSD for OS, fast SSD for cache, fast Media Raid or SSD (sometimes a dedicated Read and a dedicated Write). Having the multiple data channels via the mainboard can make a difference in stability and speed for Editing Software. More crashes occur when everything is driving from a single SSD (especially if it is the OS and Programs drive). When it gets even more intense is with multi-cam work where you have several streams of video simultaneously. To be honest, I can't imagine paying the apple tax on a 16TB SSD internally; not when equivalent nvmeSSD raids can deliver the same speeds or higher for a fraction of the cost.
