Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨💻? Find out how to check here.
Forum Discussion
Too high disk activity
While I'm using my computer normally without touching anything Dropbox related, the Dropbox process (I have a system monitor installed that shows disk usage and which process is using it the most amo...
I'm running Windows 10 and my Dropbox is located on my E drive (E:\Dropbox). I also notice high disk activity. However when I look in Resource Monitor I noticed that the high activity generated by Dropbox.exe is on the C drive (not E).
Sanchez
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorIn my case this is only an issue on startup, dropbox uses 100% disk usage for ages.
I have a large set of many small files which rarely change, but every time dropbox starts it needs to check whether any files have changed. As an aside, I'm using smart sync so most of the files are 0b. So even with an SSD things slow down, it's not the amount of data being read it's the number of reads.
Anyhow my workaround is to delay running dropbox after startup. At least this way I've got a chance to open whatever programs I need before dropbox spools up. Once programs are open I don't need the disk so much. You can find third party apps to delay startup but you don't need that. In the dropbox app, I disabled "run on startup", and then created a task (task manager) to run dropbox 30 minutes after log on.
- I need my disk at all times unfortunately. It is just not good enough. My final solution was to get rid and buy Office 365 which comes with free 1TB space. Never an issue... Although it is a bit slower to upload/download, it is much more reliable. I also don't get any unknowingly deleted flies. . Sorry dropbox but you lost a loyal customer.
I had to stop dropbox and switch to google drive... 100% Disk usage for no apparent reason and freezing my laptop.
The post above didn't help a bit.
I don't know if this has been solved elsewhere, but I finally found a partial solution for the constant hangs I was getting while Dropbox pegged my hard drive usage at 100%. Hopefully this will fix the issue for everyone else or at least make the problem happen a lot less often as it did with me. I've included the original link and a summary/adaptation of the instructions below that.
how-to-fix-100-disk-usage-in-windows-10
Open your task manager and find one of the Dropbox instances under the "Processes" tab. Right click it and select "properties." Select the "security" tab and, with the "ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES" selected, click the "edit" button. Check the box next to "Write" and apply.
I still have the occasional spike, but it happens a LOT less now. Hope this helps.
Aha! Finally - confirmation! I've spent hours trying to track this down (I even swapped my desktop unit thinking it might be a dodgy disk).
I used the GUI for the Windows Peformance Toolkit by Google (scroll down to the Oct 12, 2015 post by MoRbldBoY) linked on this page: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/how-to-fix-100-disk-usage-in-windows-10/7c5c979b-0ed0-4855-b9b8-05b9499533e2?page=3
What do I see? 100% usage and Dropbox is all over the place. I pause sync and the disk usage drops, unpause and it's soon at 100% again. I'm using SmartSync so there's hardly any I/O transfer.
How has this issue existed for so long Dropbox? I hope my boss can get our OneDrive issues sorted in the next few days: then we can say goodbye to this.
Hopefully this sample of trace might give one of your devs a clue!
