Forum Discussion

Lynk's avatar
Lynk
Helpful | Level 6
9 months ago

I have an encrypted exFAT external drive, but I don't see the prompt to back it up to Dropbox.

I just bought a SanDisk 2TB drive and encrypted it with their software.  There is currently only about 30GB of data on it.  When I plug it in, I do not get the "Do you want to back up this drive" mes...
desktop
Dropbox Backup
windows
Nancy's avatar
Nancy
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
9 months ago

Hey Lynk! Welcome to our Community. 

If you right-click on your external drive directly (from your File Explorer's sidebar), do you see the “Backup to Dropbox…” option, by any chance? If you do, you can back it up to Dropbox this way, even if the dialog box doesn’t show up.

If this doesn’t work either, please try opening your Dropbox backup settings (by going to https://www.dropbox.com/backup/all, clicking on Manage backups > Open Backup settings in the top-right corner). Are you seeing your external drive there, along with the possibility to back it up? 

Let me know how it goes.

  • Lynk's avatar
    Lynk
    Helpful | Level 6
    9 months ago

    Nancy, 

    I tried these and the drive is not showing up either way. Anything else I can try before I give up and try another cloud? 

    Thank you! 

    • vladgasan's avatar
      vladgasan
      Icon for Dropbox Product Manager rankDropbox Product Manager
      9 months ago

      Hi Lynk ,

      If you're setting up new Dropbox, you can you try the following steps:

      1. Plug in the external drive and make sure it’s unlocked (since it's encrypted via SanDisk software).
      2. Open the Dropbox desktop app but don’t complete sign-in yet.
      3. On the “Welcome to Dropbox!” screen (shown in your screenshot), click:
        1. Advanced Settings
        2. Under Dropbox folder location, choose Other…
        3. Navigate to and select a folder on the external drive where you'd like Dropbox to sync.
      4. Complete sign-in and setup — Dropbox will now treat that external drive location as the main sync folder.


      If you have an existing Dropbox folder on your computer you can move it to your external drive. This article explains how.

      Let me know if this works!

      Regards,
      Vlad

      (screenshot below is from Mac but the setup should look very similar on Windows)

       

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