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Forum Discussion
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...
Hi @Jay,
Thank you for the response.
I ended up deleting my entire drive (backing it up on another first of course), and erasing it fully.
Upon doing this I got the dialog box again, and I just checked it right away.
So, that is good; but I still have a couple issues/questions:
1) What steps do I need to take to find the .dbxignore and .dropbox.device files on the root folder of the external drive (I'm using a macbook pro on OS Big Sur) ?
I want to do this for another drive also and I wasn't able to locate or un-hide them successfully, hence why I just erased the drive. I'd like to not have to do this again for another drive.
2) How do I get the dialog box back that let's me select & un-select folders to sync on my external drive?
I came the first time and now I can't get it again. I actually only want to back up part of my external hard drive, and not the whole thing. But, because I started backing it up on Dropbox and now I'm re-populating my data on the drive, Dropbox is syncing the whole thing. When I unplug and re-plug in the drive it gives me a dialog box that just says "dropbox will continue syncing your drive". I actually want to dialog box where I get to choose what folders sync and which ones do-not, like I can access through the preferences for my actual Macbook. How can I get that dialog box to come up or force it myself? I have too much data on the hard drive for the dropbox account, so I just want to put some things on but that is not currently possible.
If I ever want to change which folders sync from the hard drive in the future too it seems that there is no way to access this, which is making me question how good of a solution Dropbox can be for the external drive scenario.
What I (and it seems like a lot of others) need and/or are looking for is some equivalent to the "Manage backup" functionality for externals drives too. Because it's not something that you set once and never touch again, it's something you need to manage.
Thank you for any help.
Jay
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorIf you're still experiencing issues with the external drive backup, I'd recommend getting in contact with the support team directly for further assistance as they would be able to investigate further on their end.
