Moving files to 'online only' takes several HOURS!

[Roger C.5]

• I have the 2 TB Dropbox plan, using about 370 GB on my laptop. The laptop performance has been extremely slow for some months, so I decided to move my Dropbox folders to 'Online Only'. I thought this would take a few minutes - all my folders are up to date, so I expected only a quick comparison of every file. Instead, each batch of folders - about 25,000 files - is taking up to FIVE HOURS (a long, long 'Downloading...' phase, then a long 'Indexing...' phase)!! What's going on?!

[Rich · Accepted solution]

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@Roger C.5 wrote:

... all my folders are up to date, so I expected only a quick comparison of every file. Instead, each batch of folders - about 25,000 files - is taking up to FIVE HOURS (a long, long 'Downloading...' phase, then a long 'Indexing...' phase)!! What's going on?!

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It's re-indexing your files to make sure that everything is up to date before it removes the local copy of the files. During that process each file is split in to 4MB chunks, hashed and compared to the hashes stored on the Dropbox servers. Re-indexing 370GB of data with that many files will take a while. All you can be patient and allow it to work.

[Roger C.5]

An excellent explanation - all is now clear to me!

I have 2 batches of folders left to process, about 65 GB total. I just set the first one off, at 22:45 UK time, and it'll run overnight.

Thank you for your help.

Roger