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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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UKD Correction to my earlier email, where I reported that my Sync iOS apps hadn’t yet digested all my Terabyte+ worth of Dropbox data. Right after posting about this, I opened my iPad app for Sync and —tada!—the migration was complete and all my folders were 100% operational. Better still, the folders weren’t a jumbled mess, but laid out alphabetically, just as they are offline on my external disk, with PDF files identified by an appropriate icon, ditto for Word and Pages files. My next step will be to activate two-factor login, and then I’ll be sitting pretty.
UKD My entire Dropbox is just under 2T, so it wasn’t too big of a deal to switch over. It took Sync.com under an hour to digest it on my computer, and the iOS apps needed about 24-36 hours. Given the size of your own requirements, I’d say you are wise to take a gradual approach. If you do it in 2T-a-day increments, you should be in good shape.
fjazzfjazz UKD shinbeth To answer your question, if Dropbox solves the problem before May, I might very well return, if only because it’s the de facto industry standard for folder sharing— plus they allow me to back up my entire account on Synology. I don’t plan on closing my Dropbox account for this reason, although I may downsize it.
So, far, however, I’m finding Sync.com perfectly well adapted to my other needs — and their REAL end-to-end encryption makes my sensitive data more secure. So I’ll have to see when the ensuing month brings us.
ArthurPix @fjazzfjazz @shinbeth I don't think I'll go back sadly. I will keep my personal account with them just for sheer convenience and because it's nowhere near as big as my business one but their whole attitude on this has left a nasty taste in my mouth.
If sync.com is just as good and I don't have the constant sucking up of CPU and RAM too from their app then to me it's good to go. My main requests are team sharing facility, being able to use an external drive and the ability to share externally. It seems sync.com has all this for $15 per user per month. Dropbox has increased to $24 per user per month now. So with 9 people I'll be saving just under $1K USD per year.
I am all paid up until September so I shall be keeping it until then but just not renewing.
- Is it possible to point Sync.com at the current external Dropbox folder, so it exists in both until dropbox is switched off, or is that just asking for trouble? I don't want to have to duplicate the (just under) 3Tb I data I have stored in my 'master' dropbox folder, ifI don't have to, as I switch to Sync.com.
Ru 1971 OH NO, YOU DO NOT want to have two services pointed at the same folder. Unless they have safeguards built in, this would be like the hall of mirrors with both services back at each other and eventually choke, possibly mangling your data—or, if you’re a guitarist, think about ear-shredding feedback.
What you CAN do is copy your Dropbox folder onto Sync, which is what I did, so that I’d have a backup in case of unforeseen disaster. Happily, I didn’t need it, and now can safely delete my Dropbox contents. I’ll have to check when my subscription comes up for renewal, so I can downgrade it.
- Totally concur with that. You are setting yourself up for total data loss, so avoid at all costs.
I am a small user in comparison to most of you on this thread (only 1.4 TB), but I moved to Sync.com and I haven't looked back. It may not be quite as full featured as dropbox, but it was easy to set up and has worked flawlessly from the beginning. I'm glad, for the sake of the really large users, that dropbox is going to try to fix this, but I don't intend to move back no matter what dropbox does. I have a couple of reasons for this. First, the way dropbox handled this whole affair just reeks, and they've lost my trust. Second of all, from what I've read, the workarounds that others have implemented (OneDrive, for example) seem to be more than a little bit of a kludge, and I don't need that.
