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I have to wait on my macs (27" and two 13" Macbook, three and four years old, newest systems) almost 10 to 15 Minutes until i can use other apps, as dropbox syncs so slow the list. After list is loaded, the file syncing is in normal speed.
An update to the next level (where Smartsync is possible) is too expensive.
So what to do?
Best regards
Josef
I do have a lot of files (2 million) but am only using a fraction of the total storage.
(1) it is available on different machines and (2) you don't have to decide what to do with old folders due to lack of capacity.
Jane
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support
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It is not a solution. In a year or so, you will be back where you started. Dropbox is [profanity removed by moderation according to the Community Guidelines] and have a top tier membership version which I am giving up because of this. I am sick of it.
I have an update to my original issue. Following one of the user suggestions, I upgraded my (mid-2010 "cheese grater") Mac to SSD storage. Between that and switching to "smart sync" and online storage (whatever it is called, when the files are downloaded only when you use them) my problem is mostly gone.
Obviously, this might not work for everyone. In this respect I concur that upgrading your hardware is not a "solution" in the sense you would expect from the support / troubleshooting discussion group for a software product. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of the lack of a software type solution.
It is likely that someone who can't afford $2-3k to buy a new computer or spend ~$500 on SSD's and memory upgrades, will be also unable to afford a paid Dropbox account. It probably makes sense financially to let those broke and / or stingy customers fend for themselves (especially the ones with several million files).
But you never know, some kid in Finland might just be working on a cloud storage system that also keeps track of the metadata of your files on every one of your computers so it doesn't have to rebuild the database or whatever each time the user logs in.
Thank you Shaun S.10 for the info on upgrading the storage to SSD. As I mentioned, that solved the issue for me as well. Previously I had increased the memory to 64GB and that didn't make a lot of difference. Switching to online-only storage for most files also helped, but I think it was really the switch from HDD to SSD that did the trick.
This has been an issue for years with Dropbox. I guess they just have no idea how to fix it. I'm upgrading to SSDs on my 2012 MBP just to "reduce" the effect of this.
SSD is a really good idea!
Maybe this is the solution. Only the time to set up the new SSD with the old system is enormous.
The trick of starting dropbox in Terminal (or *.command script) seems to solve the freezing issue at dropbox startup due to cpu hog.
Problem was happening regularly, every month or so on 2019 macmini with 1TB ssd and 64gig ram. Sometimes dropbox failed to start at all. Not sure if issue returns everytime dropbox is updated. On each launch Was getting warning "Dropbox was downloaded from internet". Maybe fixed by: sudo chown -R $USER /Applications/Dropbox*
Also, When started from Terminal it does not seem freeze up the mac, so possible work-around.
1. Create file named /Users/Shared/DropboxDelayedStart.command as follows...
In TextEdit -> Make plain text, (or nano) paste in following and save-as /Users/Shared/DropboxDelayedStart.command
sleep 20
echo "Starting Dropbox after 20 second delay"
sleep 5
/Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/MacOS/Dropbox
2. In Terminal:
chmod a+x/Users/Shared/DropboxDelayedStart.command
3 Quit dropbox, then double-click /Users/Shared/DropboxDelayedStart.command and it should start dropbox after 20-sec delay. If not double-check steps above.
4. Once you know Delayed start works, then In SysPrefs: Users: Login Items, remove Dropbox and add /Users/Shared/DropboxDelayedStart.command
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