Restoring backup drive to new hardware

[dgallant]

The external drive that I backed up died. I never tested this, but assumed that there was a way to get the files back onto the drive. It is a large folder of folders, but every time I tried to download a child folder I get an error that it contains too many zips. 

Is there a fairly standard way to rebuild the external hard drive that I backed up?

Can I connect this drive to the machine and let the Dropbox Mac OS App do the work for me?

Cheers, and thanks in advance 

[Walter]

Hi there @dgallant, sorry to hear about this.

Can you please confirm that you're following these steps? Also, could you send us a screenshot of the exact error you're getting so that we  can have a look too?

How large are the folders you're trying to  download by the way and how many files do they contain approximately?

Let us know more and we'll take it from there. 

[dgallant]

Hello

I reformatted the drive and selected it to be used by the Backup product.
It looks like I have 2 drives now, one empty, and one with the data that I want to move onto the new drive.

The first drive that was backed up died, but I want the data back on the external hard drive as well as Dropbox Backup.

Is there any way to merge a 2nd device into the first backup snapshot? Better yet, even have it continue on from the first?

[dgallant]

Here is a snap of the error.

[dgallant]

This seems similar. It appears I can't

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/View-download-and-export/New-External-Hard-drive-Transfer-458-97-GB-...

[Jay]

Hi @dgallant, currnetly, it isn't possible to merge backups on the site.

If you wish, you can suggest this change for others to vote on, so the dev team can look into this in future! 

[dgallant]

Jay is there a better way to download the files? Between the .zip error which seems to be common, and my browser timing out, the Data seems stuck. 

[Jay]

Currently, the maximum amount you can download is 250 GB in a single zip file, with no more than 10,000 files within it.

As it sounds like it's greater than that amount, you'd need to download files in batches from the site. 

[dgallant]

Good morning Jay

5.5 gig files are causing my browser fail, the .zip files are incomplete.
I've got a high end mesh wifi network, 1.3gig network down, and a current Mac Mini computer. 

Is there a better way that your team suggests get the files out of Backup, or we really need to look at small folder chunks and download those manually, to rebuild?

[Jay · Accepted solution]

Currently, there isn't another method to download the files from the site, aside from what I've mentioned by downloading them in smaller batches.