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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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You wrote: "need a solution fast -- I have 360 gb on my External Dropbox ssd -- and in the internal Mac mini drive only 150gb free -- need to point to the old ssd dropbox folder".
Personally, I went with Sync.com. Actually we went with a pro account and have three of our staff on it. We will shortly be adding at least two more of our staff on this. It works very well for us. It is a bit slow so if you need access to everything very quickly, this might not work for you.
But let me tell you what I do like about it. First of all it is unlimited storage if you have two or more on pro which is still about the same price I was paying to dropbox but with a whole bunch more storage, as an unlimited. This helps us a lot as before, some of us we're having to be very careful with what they uploaded. Now it's irrelevant. We like this a lot.
We have learned to deal with the speed that they offer. Some people will not be able to live with this. But it is not as bad as it seems at least for us. I do wish it were faster. But privacy has a cost I guess.
Which brings me to another thing I like a whole lot. Privacy. They are 100% private. They could not look at your stuff if they wanted to. Dropbox is completely different. They claim that everything is wide open and they can and will look at anything they want. That is no longer acceptable to me and I will likely no longer deal with a company that does that.
There are other issues about dropbox that I simply do not want to support. You can see my writings in this thread to understand more if interested.
Anyway, for what it's worth, for our company, Sync.com is working very well. The price is very good, the service is stable and strong, the privacy is exactly what I want, and the speed slower than I want.
I hope this helps.
TheMainOne I'm also on sync.com. A few quirks and I think by biggest issue might be the lack of opening when you have a file online. Previously with Dropbox I could double click the file and it would download and open. I don't seem to be able to do that with sync.com but maybe I need to add some integration in, not sure.
Yes it's a bit slower but overall I'm pretty happy with it. I have 8 people on it so far with 1 more to go but everyone seems happy with it. Just have my large projects to move yet and that's taking some time but I have time. My subscription doesn't end until November so it'll all be moved by then.
That's good to hear. We are integrating more and more of our staff to Sync.com.
The price is really favorable. And even so, I'd pay a couple of dollars more if they could increase the speed. But it might be a combination of things including the processing needed to keep everything private. So all in all, I'm very happy. Like you, we have the time and don't need instant access to everything.
I'm actually happy for the amount of time that I have spent trying to find a solution. If not for this debacle, I would still be with dropbox. And I would still be experiencing the lack of privacy and very high prices.
I'm not sure about the issue you have regarding double clicking. I don't use it that way so I haven't tried it. Most of our stuff is stored in the vault. Otherwise it would automatically sync and take up everybody's space on at least some hard drives. Not everybody has a lot. So the vault works really good.
It took us a little bit of time to get used to the whole process. But we expected that.
Sync.com has been very reliable so far. Even when my connection drops which it does once in a while, it still seems to be very stable and solid.
I have uninstalled dropbox now. I only use my free account through the web. And they don't really use that any longer. I'll probably just delete it before long.
I'm really glad to hear someone else is finding success with this as well.
We are the same in adjusting to new processes. Getting my team to ensure all links are in the project folder is essential. We'll adjust eventually and overall I'm pretty pleased with it all. There are some niggles but it's to be expected. They don't have the same money as Dropbox but hopefully they will grow but continue with their ethics and customers security in mind. Also that they stick to what they offer and not add stupid new features all the time.
The heavy lifting for us though is yet to come. The biggest folders account for nearly 13TB so that's gonna take a while but I have a plan. So far I've managed to move 1.5TB of our day to day data.
I was looking at the vault but right now it's not a good fit. I am not going to ever end up relying 100% totally on archival storage on a cloud server. I have my IT guy putting together a new NAS that will eventually hold all my archive files and also keep localised copies of all the files on cloud.
Synology boxes work well for local storage which remains backed up in the cloud
Ru 1971 This is the third time I’ve repeated this warning and I’ll hope third time is the charm: For the sake of your data, NEVER EVER place a Dropbox folder inside of another cloud storage folder. You’re lucky you got off with mere loss of a check mark, because placing one service inside of another would, if left to its own devices, set off an infinite recursion, triggering data corruption. My guess is that Sync.com detects such errors and simply removes the operation of the other storage service, protecting you from yourself. You should be thankful you got off so lightly.
- Re-read my posts. I specifically stated they were *not* sharing data and were on entirely separate external drives.
Ru 1971 I have no wish to argue, and there’s no need to take offense. I was just trying to help you out. In particular, I was trying to make sense of your statement:
“I've been testing Sync.com on a couple of my machines, & it works pretty well. The only issue I have is that it interferes with the 'green/blue syncing checkbox' for my dropbox folder. I.e When Sync.com is running, I can't see the online/offline/sync status of my dropbox files in the finder.”
I took your remark to mean that you were seeking to run that Dropbox folder inside of Sync. If you were not doing this, there’s no way that one could interfere with the other. However, when you use the finder, you do need to choose which service you’re using it for.
Here’s why. As I understand it, each service operates partially as an extension of the Finder. You can either use one extension or the other, but the Finder doesn’t permit you to use both at the same time. That’s to avoid the infinite recursion error.
Does this answer your question?
