Mac migration - what to do?

[annaps]

I've just got a new Mac, and don't know how to handle Dropbox in this process.

I ran the "Mac migration" tool to copy files across from the old Mac. This has copied everyting, including my very large Dropbox directory with >500,000 files in it. But I've just now read I should have signed out of Dropbox on the old Mac before running the Mac migration tool. Doh!

I'm worried that if I sign into Dropbox on the new Mac it's going to complain, or worst case scenario, get irretrievably broken. 

What should I do now?

1. Just try signing into Dropbox on the new Mac and see what happens?
2. Delete the Dropbox directory on the new Mac, sign into Dropbox, and let Dropbox resync everything via the internet - presumably quite slowly?
3. Wipe the new Mac; disable backups and sign out of Dropbox on the old Mac; and re-run the entire Mac migration, then try signing into Dropbox on the new Mac?

[Nancy]

Hi @annaps, and welcome to our forum. 

Please note that migration tools may affect the Dropbox desktop app in various and unexpected ways. Since this isn't a method supported by the Dropbox service officially, we're unable to say what effects it will have, if you install the app and sign in now.

In general, the method we support is installing the Dropbox app on your new device and letting the files sync (as you also suggested in your second point). Now, in cases where there are a lot of files saved on your Dropbox account (more than 300k), we recommend using selective sync, so that the performance of the Dropbox app doesn’t decline.

Hope this clarifies things a bit.

[annaps]

I went for option 1 and what seems to have happened is that I synced Dropbox for two days and ended up with half a million files that seem to be mostly zero bytes!

Back to the drawing board. I think I will re-run the migration from scratch, and look for a better backup solution.

It would be very helpful if there was at least some official documentation on this, if it's not possible to actually fix the problem.