Shared Dropbox Folder OS X and Windows-Bootcamp

[Alejandro M.]

Is it safe to assign the whole dropbox folder tree hierarchy to point to the same root from another os partition installation?
Case in point, a Macbook with bootcamp and windows installed, so this laptop has on the same drive two partitions:
- Dropbox is installed on the windows partition and points to D:\Windows\Dropbox\
- Dropbox is also installed in OSX and points to \Volumes\MacHD\Users\Dropbox\

This makes the Dropbox folder to take 'double' the space on the same computer as all the contents for the dropbox synced files are in two different places. Is it possible to make the Mac OS X installation of Dropbox to point to the same Dropbox folder used in windows?
- i.e. in OSX to make it point to \Volumes\BOOTCAMP\Windows\Dropbox\ so files exist only once?

(OS X is able to read/write the windows NTFS partition by using Paragon NTFS plugin)

[Alejandro M.]

Following up, actually when trying to point OSX Dropbox to the windows partition it says that it already exists and that it will rename it.
Is this just not possible?

[Dave C.5]

Yes its possible.
When doing the OSX run, you should be able to point to the same folder, if it doesnt let you, just rename the folder, and install to the old name, then move all the files in. the Windows version when running again will look at the new folder with the old folder name.

WARNING WARNING WARNING : DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT, employ the use of selective sync!
As each OS keeps track of this on its own, when swapping OS's the other will think you erased the files, and erase them from the cloud!

[Alejandro M.]

Thanks a lot for your feedback and suggestions!
- No selective sync. Got it!
- Testing right away.

Just to make sure:
- Original name is D:\Dropbox\ ("D:\" being the bootcamp partition). Dropbox won't allow to set this up as the folder name because it says that it exists. So, course of action:
- Rename D:\Dropbox\ to D:\Dropbox_old.
- Set-up dropbox as usual, it will create D:\Dropbox\ all again. I shall stop all syncing operations here I'm guessing.
- Copy all D:\Dropbox_old\ to the again re-created D:\Dropbox\ folder. Resume, it should just notice that the files are already there.
- As for windows os, it shouldn't even notice that there were changes to begin with.

Seems alright?
Thanks once again.

[Alejandro M.]

It has worked perfectly fine.
Thanks a lot.

[Matthew T.27]

@Dave (hopefully you read this!) Does this apply even if you have the same folders selected in selective sync settings across the two operating systems?

The way I see it

1) Originally, files are equal on OSX and Windows

2) Add file on OSX, uploads to Dropbox

3) Reboot, Windows now sees extra file in selective sync folder, extra file on cloud. Why would it delete it? And why would it delete it on Dropbox too? As far as it's aware, isn't there just a new file in that folder? I can hardly see what the Dropbox app would feel the need to delete it.

Isn't it pretty the same thing as adding a file or folder while the dropbox service / daemon isn't running. In that case, it doesn't delete files when it launches again. It just syncs as normal.

Just wondering if you can confirm if this is correct. I don't keep files in the root directory and I sync the same folder (I have a single folder called 'Sync' which is what I use to Sync, everything else is cloud-only and doesn't sync to clients).

I can't afford to non-selective sync, and I'd like to have the two partitions sharing a Dropbox folder to save bandwidth. I have a lot of stuff I want online only.

Cheers

Matt.

[Jeremy K.4]

I just wanted to chime in here that I am also doing a Windows install on my Macbook Air using Bootcamp and would love to know the answer to this question.

[Ingmar O.]

How to handle the same Dropbox account and locate the Dropbox folder to be used on  OS X 11 partition and on  BootCamp Windows 10 partition.

Happy to hear a clean suggestion

[Dave C.5]

Matthew T. : Just saw this

3) Reboot, Windows now sees extra file in selective sync folder, extra file on cloud.

That didnt make any sense sorry. There is no selective sync folder.

This is what happens.

OSX>\\dropbox\folder\file

WIN>\\dropbox\folder\file

OSX unsyncs \\dropbox\folder so the local folder is removed  but the cloud folder remains

WIN is spun up and win.dropbox finds \\dropbox\folder has been removed (it doesnt know anything about the osx install) and so removes it from the cloud.

[Jay L.16]

Alejandro M./Dave C.,

I am trying to follow what you Alejandro accomplished but I am having a problem. Can you read what I did below and let me know which of the steps I did is wrong?

• Installed Dropbox on the windows partition and pointed to "C:\Dropbox\" when C Drive is the BOOTCAMP partition.
• Installed Dropbox in OSX. When I tried to move the folder location from "\Volumes\MacHD\Users\Dropbox\" to "\Volumes\BOOTCAMP\\Dropbox\"(which I can see using Paragon NTFS plugin)", Dropbox gave me that the folder already exist. So I changed the exisiting folder name to "\Volumes\BOOTCAMP\\Dropbox_Old\" Then in OSX, I created a folder "\Volumes\BOOTCAMP\\Dropbox\". I stopped syncing and quit Dropbox. I moved all the contents from "\Volumes\BOOTCAMP\\Dropbox_Old\" to "\Volumes\BOOTCAMP\\Dropbox\".
• When I tried to sync again, Dropbox seems to be working but is now stuck at "Downloading file list". It takes forever.

I would appreciate it if you could point me to the right direction!