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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 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.
51 Replies
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- Walter
Dropbox Community Moderator
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.
Yes, dropbox desktop is running and syncing files in my Dropbox folder correctly.
I am getting neither prompt, although I am mainly interested in one of the partitions. The other one I don't intend to backup to Dropbox.
- Hello,
I’m not sure this is the same issue I started the thread about…you might community answers on a new post. I never found a fix for this. The only way to get Dropbox to recognize the drive was to reformat it and reconnect it. I couldn’t get Dropbox to prompt me to back it up any other way (it took me six reformats to conclude that). Good luck. Yes, Walter. Contacting by email is fine. Thank you.
Jennifer G.29 It seems like the same issue to me: I connect an external hard drive, and never get prompted for backup.
I appreciate that formatting the hard drive fixed it for you. I am not willing to do that. It's inherently destructive and seems like a poor experience for what seems to be failure in the Dropbox UI. It should have a way to tell it which external hard drive to backup on a Mac, like apparently is possible on Windows.
Hey All,
Same issue-- Drive is formated as HFS+ but I am not prompted to backup when the drive is connected. Is there any available fix?
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.
