Control Dropbox Sync

[Zaidy036]

 At the present time Dropbox does not have batch control commands to Pause and Restart sync so it does not influence other work. What would the effect be of using batch to change the name of a Dropbox folder to another empty folder so that temporarily there is nothing to sync. Would Dropbox then erase all of its existing synced files? Would it get confused and crash?

Something like following with C:\Users\<name>\DBx existing and empty or use Robocopy to move all contents to a temp location:

REN C:\Users\<name>\Dropbox  DB

REN C:\Users\<name>\DBx  Dropbox    

   <other batch commands>

REN C:\Users\<name>\Dropbox  DBx

REN C:\Users\<name>\DB  Dropbox    

Similar but maybe less disruptive is to have two sub folders within the Dropbox folder one Primary and one Empty and remove the primary so one is only syncing the empty one:

- F: is any temporary location:

 ROBOCOPY /E /MOVE C:\Users\<name>\Dropbox\Primary F:\Primary

   <other batch commands>

 ROBOCOPY /E /MOVE F:\Primary C:\Users\<name>\Dropbox\Primary

I do not have a test Windows PC to try either approach but any comments or perhaps someone can test and report back.

[Walter]

Hey @Zaidy036 - thanks for using Dropbox and posting on our Community. 

I just wanted to clarify that if the Files are moved from the folder in Dropbox while the desktop app is running and syncing, then it will see the move as a deletion, so syncing would need to be paused manually.

I'll leave this thread open for any user that might have something else to add.

[Zaidy036]

Thanks for the reply to my "wild dream" and I am glad I did not try it.

I currently use PTFBpro to control DB sync in unattended batches and was looking for something faster and simpler. Sure wish they would add batch commands to start/stop sync.

[Zaidy036]

I am now using PsSuspend to pause Dropbox during my unattended batch runs. It works on Dropbox and info is at <https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pssuspend>