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I need to copy (not move) a Dropbox folder to an external hard drive.
Very simple..
Can you COPY dropbox folder to an external hard drive? And when I mean COPY, I mean make a COPY... as in making a backup of the entire dropbox onto a large external har ddrive. If so HOW?
There is no clear answer on the internet... which makes me wonder if it's possible... and if it is, why is it so hard to figure out how?
16 Replies
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- Rich
Super User II
dukeeastwood wrote:
Can you COPY dropbox folder to an external hard drive? And when I mean COPY, I mean make a COPY... as in making a backup of the entire dropbox onto a large external har ddrive. If so HOW?
There's no specific feature that does that, but if you have all of your files syncing to your computer and marked as available offline, you can just use the copy function of your operating system to copy the Dropbox folder to any location you wish.
- Calvin2DBX
Dropbox Staff
Hey dukeeastwood,
Thanks for getting in touch!
Yes, exactly as Rich mentioned, you can copy Dropbox folders, just like any other folder on the computer.
You will need to be able to fit them "Offline" to do that, so it's a good idea to check how big they are on Dropbox, first.
Next, have you got the Dropbox desktop application installed?
With the app installed, you just go to the Dropbox folder on your computer, right click the item you want to copy, and set it as "Offline" — check the sync staus to see when it's finished downloading, and you can copy and paste it in your external drive.
Give it a try and let me know how you get on!
How do I specify the location I want the files to download to?
This app looks like it needs A LOT of work...
like for instance... selecting "offline" is how you Download a file? Doesn't seem like the word "offline" should be used for that... very confusing
- Jay
Hi dukeeastwood, you can copy the files to a folder using your file explorer on your machine, and choose where to move the files.
When using the Dropbox desktop application, files are not necessarily on your machine, depending on your plan and OS. Marking files as available offline means that they are physically downloaded to your computer, so that you can then open them normally.
