Smart Sync set to Online Only but still taking up storage.

[fransg]

Right now, 24 hours after finishing the upload, the HD is back to 305GB free space.

So I can say it works okay here, just slower and a little more mysterious than expected 😉

[fransg]

PS and two days later, with all picture folders still online-only, 158GB of space is taken up locally by these files again, according to Finder... So there still must be a misunderstanding between Dropbox and Higfh Sierra, cropping up or disappearing without explanation.

[Jane]

Hey fransg, I appreciate your detailed description of the issue here & I'd like to follow-up on the matter. 

As you've mentioned that you've already raised a ticket with our team, could you include a ticket ID to reference in your reply here, so that I look it up internally and check back with my colleague?

Thanks in advance & I'm looking forward to hearing back from you!

[Tambe257]

FYI - I am running Sierra 10.12.6 and I have the same issue. In the screenshot below you'll see that the Mac says I have 165.91 GB available, but it also says that 331.48 GB of documents are on my HD. (398 GB HD total available) Almost all of the large files listed in teh image are stored online only.

[bn]

Hi folks,

I work on Smart Sync. The Finder info panel has occaisonally had issues in the past (we're checking with the powers that be of a certain OS vendor for the recurrance of any issues). Things that would be helpful:

1. Are you running on APFS or any non-HFS+ filesystem?
2. When you run `du [relevant dropbox folder]` do you get back disk usage that agrees or disagrees with the Finder info panel?

Thanks in advance!

[Tambe257]

Hi bn,

    I am still running Sierra, so I am using HFS+. For a folder containing file stored online only: Running du returns 0, which is correct. "ls" returns the file name. I ran a Grand Perspective scan as well and that looks like the files are stored locally. I don't know how Grand Perspective does their scans, but if it is a Finder issue, then it's not surprising that Grand Perspective also looks wrong.

Thanks, 

 Tony

[cvonie]

Thank you for responding.  I am looking for direct support from DropBox, as the responses here are addressing issues that are different from what I am experiencing.  My mac is older and running Yosemite 10.10.5.  When trying to get DropBox files off my local hard drive, I do this... 

Is there something else I should be doing?  What am I missing?  My local hard drive is at max capacity and from the way the others are talking, this should be easy enough to keep these files 'online only.'  Help please!  Gotta backup my phone and the computer is too overloaded loaded to do that...

[Ross_S]

Hi @cvonie,

Looks like you're hitting Selective sync conflicts. All those grey minuses...

https://help.dropbox.com/syncing-uploads/selective-sync-conflicts

If you resolve you selective sync conflict issues then you should start to see it behaving as expected.

[fransg]

I found something that may be of interest here.

I very rarely use Path Finder since originally it would not work with High Sierra and I got used to doing everything with OSX's Finder instead.

When I do open Finder and view a folder on Dropbox that is online-only, immediately all files in that folder will be downloaded to my local HD.

This is only visible when I open the Finder and watch what's happening in the folder that was moments before open in Path Finder.

I then immediately set that folder to online-only and all is corrected after some time has passed.

It may be a good idea to now use Path Finder at all for the time being.

I enclose information about the version of Path Finder that I have on my machine.

[diamonte21]

I'm having the same problem with Dropbox Professional.  All my folders and files are set to "online only" (grey cloud) but it is still taking up the same space as a local file (green tick).  I'm running macOS High Sierra v10.13.2 with only 120GB of storage space.  My ticket reference is 7423104.  I can no longer add anything to my 1TB Dropbox as it says I don't have enough hard drive space.  So not only can I not use my laptop but I also can't use Dropbox.  Really disappointed and I hope there's a quick solution.