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Moving or Copying Dropbox To Another Computer
I just moved 80 Gbytes of Dropbox folders and files (not that much really) to my new computer. First I copied them to an external hard drive. Then I installed the Dropbox application on the new compu...
Hey jrlbell, there are some steps you can follow, so that the application doesn't sync your Dropbox files, but only indexes them.
This however would require to have your Dropbox files already on your new computer and not on an external drive.
These steps are:
1. Rename your existing Dropbox folder to "Dropbox (old)" or similar.
2. Install Dropbox and select the location that you want for the Dropbox folder.
3. When the installation is finished, Dropbox will immediately start to sync.
4. Pause syncing or exit Dropbox.
5. Move only the content of "Dropbox (old)" into the newly created Dropbox folder. When the move is complete, and not before, resume syncing or re-launch Dropbox.This should cause the app to index the files, instead of redownload them.
I hope this helps.
Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
Dropbox Community ModeratorHey jrlbell, thanks for the additional info and the clarifications.
Your feedback is also very valuable and I will make sure it's passed along to our team.
I'm not really clear on why you followed this process; adding files to your Dropbox folder (even if they already exist in your Dropbox account), would cause them to get uploaded again, thus the "Uploading" sync status.
In my opinion, it would have been faster to just allow the application to sync everything down, after installing the app to your new computer.
In any case, I'm glad to see that syncing is now finished and everything's gone back to normal, even if it was that slow.
And of course, your feedback will be passed along.
If you have any other questions, please let us know.
I had a fairly straight forward reason for copying the folders and files to my new computer. I actually needed to use them and I didn't want to wait 7 to 10 days (or who knows how long) for the files to download to my computer from cloud.
Now that I know how Dropbox works (or doesn't work) I will never do that again.
My question remains though: why, if the exact same files are in the cloud and on my computer in the "Dropbox" folder (after I copied the files over) does Dropbox not simply reindex the files?
- Nancy
Hi jrlbell! Hope you don’t mind me jump in.
What you mentioned in your last message sounds correct; however, please keep in mind that sometimes the status of the Dropbox app may show as “syncing”, even though it’s actually indexing your files. This may still take some time though, depending on the number and size of your files.
Like Hannah suggested, if you need to do something similar in the future, it may be better to sync the files anew to your Dropbox app as online-only, and then make available offline only the files/folders you need access to on a more regular basis.
I guess I'm still looking for an answer to my original question which was, in a nutshell, how to move the Dropbox files and folders to the Dropbox folder on a new computer quickly, via external hard drive or a network share, without them being uploaded all over again? If this cannot be done, then maybe someone could confirm that it is not possible.
JB
- Hannah
Hey jrlbell, there are some steps you can follow, so that the application doesn't sync your Dropbox files, but only indexes them.
This however would require to have your Dropbox files already on your new computer and not on an external drive.
These steps are:
1. Rename your existing Dropbox folder to "Dropbox (old)" or similar.
2. Install Dropbox and select the location that you want for the Dropbox folder.
3. When the installation is finished, Dropbox will immediately start to sync.
4. Pause syncing or exit Dropbox.
5. Move only the content of "Dropbox (old)" into the newly created Dropbox folder. When the move is complete, and not before, resume syncing or re-launch Dropbox.This should cause the app to index the files, instead of redownload them.
I hope this helps.
