I want to back up my external HD to my Dropbox account. What should happen: When I connect the external drive, I should get a popup that asks if I want to back up the external drive, I select it, then set it up. What does happen: Nothing. I don't get a popup when I connect the external drive. In Preferences/Backups, the "Hide all setup notifications when new external drives are plugged-in" is NOT selected and never has been. The only instructions Support could provide are "You get a pop up window saying back up this external hard drive and you select it and then you click on set up." I don't get the popup, so I can't do this. I don't see another way to set the external drive to back up. I know this is a relatively new feature, but it isn't working at all for me and I haven't seen any other threads with this problem. How can I find a way to do this? Thanks for your help.

Same issue for me here no dialog pop up. I dismissed the dialog the first time it came up, but I do want to set this up now, and be able to configure it whenever I want. So far looks like the support/communication here has been POOR. We deserve better. - My external HD meets all the requirements (HFS+)- Dropbox app reinstalled- Back up preferences set correctly- No ignore files in the root of my external HD- More than enough space on my account Why has there been no comprehensive answer on this yet? Why no work around or indication this is a bug , or something that's being worked on?

Seriously Dropbox, is that true – "currently external drives on Mac computers with more than 256 GB of usage, are not able to be backed up." There's no mention of that anywhere, only that we should use an out of date disk format, and my external drive is 2TB. I've been an advocate of Dropbox since the early days but this whole experience with the external drive backup functionality has been uncharacteristically shoddy. Please get it fit for purpose asap.

Same issue here: - 4 TB external drive, with 1.11 TB used- formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" according to Disk Utility, which apparently is just a different name for "HFS+"- macOS 10.14.6- dropbox v135.4.4221- 2 TB family plan- no suspiciously named hidden files in root of drive which would mark this drive not te be used by Dropbox Backup (what name or mechanism does Dropbox use for this anyway?) A solution would be greatly appreciated

hello, I plugged in an external hard drive a few times to do some final management, so I dismissed the dialogue box asking if I wanted to back it up with dropbox. Now I can't find a way to sync this drive or re-prompt the dialogue box.

Why in the world hasn't DBX added an option from the system tray dropdown menu to "Backup External Drives" which should then reinstate the prompt that we're all looking for when you plug a drive in?! This is insane. Same issue here. Accidentally clicked I didn't want to Backup, now I do want to backup entire external drive, but there seems to be no way to make DBX recognize drive again when I re-plug back into computer.

No dialog box when connecting external HD?

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Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
5 years ago
Hey there Jennifer G.29 - thanks for posting on our Community and happy Monday!

If you've ensured that our desktop app is running on your computer and that the external drive's filesystem is a supported one, you should get that pop-up when you plug your external drive into your machine.

Just keep in mind that this feature only supports external drives with filesystem type NTFS for Windows and APFS or HFS+ for Macs.

Can you double check if your external drive is supported?

Let me know what you find and we'll take it from there, Jennifer.
Jennifer G.29
Helpful | Level 6
5 years ago
Hi Walter, and thanks for your reply. The drive in my original question didn't have the right file system.

However, I reformatted another external drive as APFS encrypted and moved the files onto it. I still don't get a popup when I plug it in. Also, I don't see the Dropbox menu when I right-click on the folders or files; I do have that menu on all the files in the Dropbox folder. Other ideas? Thanks.
Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
5 years ago
Hi Jennifer G.29, currently the external drive backup works for APFS and HFS+ for Mac devices.

Since APFS Encrypted isn't specifically mentioned there, could you try a normal APFS-formatted drive and see if that is detected by the Dropbox desktop application?
Jennifer G.29
Helpful | Level 6
5 years ago
OK, now I've done it again with APFS. I got the popup when the formatting was finished, before I'd moved anything to the drive. I closed it then (without checking the box) because it's about 800GB of files and I didn't want to slow down my machine the whole day doing the transfer between drives and backup to Dropbox at the same time.

Now the file transfer is done. I've disconnected and reconnected, restarted, renamed the drive on another computer, and I can't get that popup again. Do I really have to reformat the drive just to be able to select this external drive to back up to Dropbox? Thank you for your help!
Rich
Super User II
5 years ago
Jennifer G.29 wrote:

Now the file transfer is done. I've disconnected and reconnected, restarted, renamed the drive on another computer, and I can't get that popup again.

Check the drive for hidden files. I can't comment on the drive backup function, but when you use Camera Uploads, Dropbox drops a hidden file on the drive to identify it. If you have such a file, delete it and then disconnect/reconnect the drive.
Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
5 years ago
The way the external drive backup works is by the unique identifier in the drive itself. If the drive was renamed, this might not be enough to be seen as a different device.

Can I ask why you want to backup the external drive on another machine? Did you change the files in the drive itself?
ylansegal
Explorer | Level 3
5 years ago
I am having the same issue: Connecting an external hard drive doesn't trigger dropbox to prompt for backup.

I've tried to search for hidden files in the drive root, but can't find anything dropbox related (I only see .DS_Store and .localized).

I've also tried changing the drive UUID (similar to what is listed here https://superuser.com/questions/127191/how-does-one-change-the-uuid-of-a-volume-on-mac-os-x-10-6, but using apfs.util). I can confirm that the UUID changed, but I still don't get a prompt for dropbox.

Is there no way to tell dropbox to backup an external drive without having to wait for it to prompt me? My wife just purchased 2TB of dropbox space for this feature alone, and now she can't use it.

Please advise.
Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
5 years ago
Hey ylansegal, let's see what we can find together on this!

Can I ask the storage size on your external disk, please?

Keep me posted.
ylansegal
Explorer | Level 3
5 years ago
It's a 4TB disk. It's partitioned into two 2TB volumes. Formatted using APFS.

Thank you,
ylansegal
Explorer | Level 3
5 years ago
Lori,

Thinking a bit more about this: I may not have made my point clear. The issue is not that dropbox fails to backup the external drive. Rather, it's that I can't figure out a way to tell dropbox to backup the external drive in the first place. The help article says that the dropbox will automatically prompt for backup when connecting the drive. That doesn't happen.

How do I tell dropbox to backup the external drive on a Mac?

Thank you so much,