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Forum Discussion

Jennifer G.29's avatar
Jennifer G.29
Helpful | Level 6
5 years ago

No dialog box when connecting external HD?

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 i...
Computer Backup
desktop
Setting up the apps
sync
Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox 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's avatar
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's avatar
    Megan
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox 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's avatar
      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's avatar
      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,

      • Walter's avatar
        Walter
        Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
        5 years ago
        Hey there ylansegal, sorry to jump in here, but can you clarify if the desktop app is running normally when you plug the external drive into the computer in question?

        If it's running indeed, you should be getting two separate prompts for each of your external drive's partitions.

         

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