Backup

[dversari]

You guys at Dropbox are doing everything to make me (and many others) quit Dropbox. First, you removed the possibility of resolvig symlink. Now you are not allowing to see the backup of an external drive as a normal folder. You should know that these are the only ways we have to access hundrens of thousands of pictures we, nowadays, take with smartphones and store somewhere else than our main drive. I think I will soon be forced to turn my money to Apple icloud because I don’t think it’s fair of yours to make me spend almost 20 dollars per month to sync just my main drive. I’m sorry abou this because I’ve been with you for more than 10 yers, but it’s you fault. Your policy is really weird and you are gonna loose many non professional clints. Good luck

[Walter]

Hey @dversari, sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

Can you please let us know some additional information to make sure we're on the same page?

For example,  when you say that Dropbox is not allowing you to see the backup of your external drive as a normal folder, could you elaborate a tad? 

Are you referring to the Dropbox backup feature or the ability to store your Dropbox folder on an external drive? 

Also, what is your computer's exact OS and the version of the mobile Dropbox app installed there?

Any additional information is more than welcome!

[dversari]

It’s a simple issue. I (and many others) have terabytes of pictures but laptop drives are, usually, at most 1 tb. Once I used to have all the pictures in external drive and symlinked in the macook Dropbox folder. I could simply access them fro mac and phone. The you removed the option but tou introduced the backup of external drive. Thar worked, because once again we could access the backup of the external drive with pictures as a regular folder on dropbox. Now it’s forbidden. How do you think we could manage the issue if not moving to other cloud server?

[Hannah]

Hey @dversari, sorry to jump in here.

We do appreciate your feedback about the syncing an external drive and the external drive backup feature.

However, can you clarify what you mean by "forbidden"? Are you not able to see your external drive backup in your Dropbox?

Does it not appear in your backups page?

[kundrnik]

Hannah, are Backups available from Finder like they have been since "backing up to Dropbox" first came out a couple years ago?

[Hannah]

Hey @kundrnik, you should have this option indeed.

Do you see something different?

[kundrnik]

I can only see one of my three (3) previously-configured-to-back-up to Macintosh HD > Users > Home > Dropbox computers still showing the Apple logo and (hopefully still) backing up in this manner:

 

The other two (2) computers' backups seemed to turn into static folders:

I do not want to use `Dropbox Backup (Beta)` to back up files like this:

• I want the files from each computer to back up and sync in real-time to each individual computer's folder on Macintosh HD > Users > Home > Dropbox,
• So that I can search for and access these folders from any of my computers' Finder windows (and big emphasis on being able to search these directories natively in Finder, as it's a critical requirement to have 1 singular place that can you know can search all remote servers, connected external drives, and local folders & files, etc.)

Questions:

1. How do I restore this functionality to my three (3) previously-configured-to-back-up to Macintosh HD > Users > Home > Dropbox computers?
2. How do I set this up for my new (and 4th) computer, which runs on M3 Max?

Thank you

[Jay]

Hi @kundrnik, currently, what you're requesting is not longer possible with the Dropbox desktop application. 

Backups for other devices are no longer visible on the local machine, and cannot be enabled to be viewed.

[kundrnik]

Hi Jay,

Thank you for the quick reply.

Can you help me understand the reason why Dropbox no longer supports this? And when did Dropbox stop supporting this?

[Jay]

The way that computer backups were implemented was changed, leading to the removal of the local versions of the backup, since they can only be accessed via the website now. 

This feature was changed in 2022.