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How can I back up my Documents folder when it's on another drive?
My Dropbox Plan Provides 2TB In Cloud; and my C Drive has 330GB of space free and is drive where folder C:\Users\Gary\Dropbox to add items to Dropbox in cloud exists.
I want to be able to backup my entire My Documents folder (380GB) currently on a separate much larger capacity SSD drive to Dropbox - is on my N drive. My limited space of C drive means I cannot place this drive in Dropbox at C:\Users\Gary\Dropbox as I will run out of free space.
So question is How do I get My Documents folder into Dropbox cloud when folder is bigger than the free space on C drive for me to deposit it in C:\Users\Gary\Dropbox ?
Am novice user and just started on Dropbox.
Thx Drop ball.
Hey Drop ball, indeed, the "online-only" feature allows you to free up space on your hard drive, by turning your files into placeholders, so that they take no physical space.
When a file is set to "online-only", it will appear in your Dropbox folder, but it can only be opened if the computer is connected to the internet.
You can see more about the feature here, but let me know if you have more questions.
6 Replies
- Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi Drop ball, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Currently, in order to use the Dropbox Backup feature, the folders you intend to backup must be in the default locations, and not in a non-standard location like another drive.
If they're not in their default location, then the feature wouldn't allow you to back them up.
If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.
Does the 'on line only' feature allow me to solve the issue so folders stored on cloud but not on PC so can save local storage space on my C drive in context of my original post.
- Hannah
Hey Drop ball, indeed, the "online-only" feature allows you to free up space on your hard drive, by turning your files into placeholders, so that they take no physical space.
When a file is set to "online-only", it will appear in your Dropbox folder, but it can only be opened if the computer is connected to the internet.
You can see more about the feature here, but let me know if you have more questions.
You can use Dropbox's selective sync @feature to sync just the Documents folder from your N drive. Instead of moving the whole folder into the Dropbox folder, create a symbolic link to the folder on your N drive from the Dropbox folder, so it syncs without filling up your C drive.
Thankyou Hannah. That has solved my issue ... I can create a My Documents folder within Dropbox and then add the subfolders of My original My Documents folder to it little by little; but after done mark them as 'online only'.
Can u tell me how goes Dropbox with uploading large folders ? ... say about 90GB. This is the largest folder within My Documents and my largest file within same is 18GB. Total size of My Documents is 383GB. Am interested any issues with large uploads and do they fail/stall sometimes, if so why ? My upload speed is about 24MB/sec and download is about 55MB/sec. So will take hours. That is OK.
Also am thinking of going to the Dropbox Family plan and does it have a maximum file size limit for uploads-downloads ?
Will mark as solution once have more info. Thx Drop ball.🎱
- Megan
Hey Drop ball!
The Family plan provides 2 TB of storage space that can be shared by up to 6 family members.
The speed and quantity of uploads depends on the platform you're using. You can see all of our upload limits in this article.
Keep in mind that your internet provider and connection also play an important role here, since Dropbox can only upload and download as fast as your Internet service provider (ISP) allows. Larger files usually take longer to sync.
In case you're using our desktop app, I'd suggest you tweak the bandwidth limit to "Don't Limit" to allow Dropbox to use as much bandwidth as possible.
