installing and cloning new SSD drive

[TheEngineer]

Hi

I currently have a old 1TB SSD Drive with the dropbox folder on it.  I'd like to install a new 4 TB drive in my laptop and clone the old drive onto the new larger capacity SSD drive without having to resync and download all of the files again back into the cloned dropbox folder.

This seems like it should be a very normal thing but I can't seem to find enough information on this to make me a bit more comfortable.  If I clone the drive completely, then swap them so the drive letter is restored, can I make that work? I found this on another post: "This doesn't work. When you boot up your new drive and start dropbox on it won't recognized the existing "dropbox" folder. It will force you to create a new dropbox folder and proceed to download the entire dropbox content from the cloud. pretty annoying"

Thanks in advance,

[Jay · Accepted solution]

Hi @TheEngineer, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

It's likely that the same 'drive' won't be detected as the original drive the Dropbox folder was on originally. 

This would result in the app trying to create another Dropbox folder, or renaming the older folder.

If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.

[TheEngineer]

Thanks for the response.  So it sounds like that it will need to download everything from dropbox.  Are there instructions for doing this available.  I.e. step one, remove the drop box folder, step two, remove your computer from the list of devices, etc,... any FAQ that I should refer to?

Many thanks!

[Nancy]

Hi from me as well, @TheEngineer! 

If you end up having two Dropbox folders on your computer, what you can do instead is pause the syncing of your desktop app, manually move/copy your files from the old Dropbox folder to the new one and then, resume syncing once again. 

This will cause the app to just reindex your files, instead of syncing everything from scratch.

[Rich]

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If you end up having two Dropbox folders on your computer, what you can do instead is pause the syncing of your desktop app, manually move/copy your files from the old Dropbox folder to the new one and then, resume syncing once again.

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@TheEngineer 

That's the process I use for every rebuild and it works flawlessly (did it again just last week for about the 10th time). Just know that the re-indexing will take a while and Dropbox will still appear to be uploading and downloading, but it's just sending the comparison data and any differences it finds. Be patient and LET IT WORK. My Dropbox is about 185 GB and it took the better part of a day to re-index everything.

[TheEngineer]

thanks so much!  that helps!  Really appreciate this information!

[TheEngineer]

thanks for confirming the information above.  that gives me a lot more comfort doing this!