Online only files taking up space on Windows

[IsaacGaz]

I have an 8Tb drive where I store my dropbox files on my Windows computer and despite setting all files to be 'online only' as well as going to Dropbox preferences and setting select sync to not sync any folders I am still getting the message "Can't sync not enough free space".  In my system settings it appears the files are still taking up space on my "Apple" drive where I have drobox downloaded and have set it to sync to (I have less than 200GB of non-dropbox data on that Apple drive).

 

However, when I use a storage analysis tool like WinDirStat, it doesn't see there being that much space taken up:

Here it shows only 1.4Tb of space being taken up by Dropbox files, and while that should be 0, it's still way less than what my computer system settings believes are on the drive.

I had this problem on my Mac a year ago and solved it by checking the box on the website to not have online files take up hard drive space. I've done the same for my PC. I have unlimited space on my dropbox account. I have updated Dropbox to the latest version (released December 21st 2021). I have read through every relevant online article and forum I could find. So now I am here.

Does anyone know how to solve this? I use dropbox to manage all of my projects and files. I don't have this problem on my Mac Laptop which has the same dropbox account. I am lost suffice to say hah.

[Megan]

Hi @IsaacGaz, I hope you're doing well!

Can you clarify if you're using our Smart Sync feature or selective sync to remove the files?

Also, where do you see the "Can't sync, not enough free space" message? Can you send me a screenshot? 

Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there.

[IsaacGaz]

Hello Megan!

Thanks for the quick response.

I believe I have been using Smart Sync (where I would select which folders were local or online only). I selected all of the folders and set them to online only. Then after that wasn't clearing up space, I went to Selective Sync in my settings and unchecked all the folders there.

I see the storage error message when I click on the lil dropbox icon in the computer bar:

 

[Megan]

Thanks for the screenshot, @IsaacGaz! 

It seems that the Smart or selective sync changes didn't have enough space to take place, hence the error. 

Can you try making some space on the hard drive you have the app installed on and then trying to apply the settings again after exiting the app?

 

[IsaacGaz]

Heyo Megan,

Sorry for the delayed response. Last week I tried deleting a bunch of files on the internal drive however Dropbox still gave me the error (however I'm not sure if I completely quit and restarted Dropbox then).

Since then I uninstalled dropbox completely, and the second I did that a bunch of 'ghost' dropbox files appeared (I'm using 'ghost' cause I don't know what else to call them, my computer thinks they're taking up space even though I can't open them and they are unreadable). My computer thought these dropbox files were taking up >100Tb of space (see attached picture) which is impossible on my 8Tb drive. The size of 110Tb does make sense given it's from my business partner's shared folder and we have a lot of data on there, however to my knowledge none of those shared folders were ever downloaded or selected to be synced on this drive.

I've since then gone through and deleted most of these 'ghost' files (some 400Gb of them couldn't be deleted as the app kept crashing when I tried to do so).

I believe these ghost files (which had never showed up on my computer before) were the primary reason for my computer/dropbox to think there was space being taken up. I know this was a problem on Mac (in terms of offline files appearing to take up space), is there a way to fix this on Windows? I would love to reinstall dropbox but worry that it will take over my computer again.

Thanks for any help!

[Hannah]

Hey @IsaacGaz, sorry to jump in to your conversation with Megan.

This is a strange issue to happen on a Windows computer, indeed and definitely not a known one.

May I ask, is your 'E' drive an internal or external drive?

And what happens now, if you reinstall Dropbox and switch the folder to online-only again?

[IsaacGaz]

Hey @Hannah thanks for jumping in!

My E drive is internal. When I tried reinstalling dropbox and having the folders online (after a couple days of waiting for Dropbox to sync) I ran into the same error "cannot sync not enough disk space", however there's still several terrabytes of free space on the disk.

I thought for a second it might be because the disk is damaged, however when I ran some repair software it said it wasn't. I'll look more into this (maybe uninstall Dropbox and reinstall it on a different disk).

Do you know if there's anything that can be done on the Dropbox end?

[Jay]

Hi @IsaacGaz, have you tried deleting the Dropbox cache folder in the Dropbox folder?

What do you see if you right click and choose Properties on the Dropbox folder itself in Explorer, instead of via third party apps?

[vincekye]

Just thought I'd jump in here to say that I use Smart Sync on at least two thirds of the stuff I have in Dropbox, and it still says my hard drive is 90% full, and Online Only files that cannot be opened when Dropbox is off show up as the biggest files in WinDirStat.

Just deleted the cache folder, and it doesn't seem to have done anything. This has been happening to me for years, and persists when I uninstall and reinstall Dropbox itself.

[Jay]

Hi @vincekye, the orange box icon you're seeing on those two files are Microsoft icons, and are not related to Dropbox, so they're not online-only files. 

If it was online-only, then it would be a grey cloud icon as seen here.

Could you try right clicking the file and marking it online-only to see if this helps?