How to cancel smart syncing

[philb75]

@stephennz.  you are not alone,  i am having the same issue.  as i do my initial sync, the laptop I am using is max'ing it's hard drive .   My issue is due to my master content set being on a remote SSD drive that is bigger than the laptop. 

[StephenNZ]

Hi Jay

It's telling me I have almost no space left on my hard drive at all.  The issue is that all my Dropbox files are saved to my hard drive so I thought that changing most of the folders to "online only" would fix the issue, but it hasn't.

I have a 238GB hard drive and it's telling me I have less than 1GB of storage left - 181GB of my hard drive is taken up with Dropbox files.

I need to get this fixed.  Short of downloading my files to an external 1TB hard drive then deleting them from Dropbox, I'm not sure what else I can do.

Thanks

Stephen

[Jay]

If the files are synced to your account online, showing green ticks, you can enable selective sync on one folder. This will delete the local copy of the files as the folder would be deleted from the machine.

Once that is done, disable the selective sync, and the files will automatically return as online-only files. You can then continue the same process with other folders on your account.

If you need any further assistance, please let me know!

[StephenNZ]

Hi Jay

This is so frustrating - I have selected the "online sync only" option for almost every folder but the green tick is only showing for local.

I can't copy and paste the folders on my laptop onto an external hard drive (which would allow me to remove the files from my laptop altogether).

In the meantime, I can't open business folders as there's not enough disk space left to allow me to do this.

My laptop s basically useless.

I'm so pissed off, I've wasted more than a week trying to fix this problem.

Stephen

[Jay]

Have you looked into what I suggested previously, by using selective sync (and not Smart Sync) on folders with the green tick to free up local space first, and then returning the files as online-only?

[StephenNZ]

I can't even find selective synch.  I'm read to throw in the towel and move to One Drive. I've been with Dropbox for many years, it' the first time I've struck this issue but it's preventing me from working.

[Jay]

Are you not able to locate the selective sync option in the Dropbox desktop application preferences? Does it not load for you?