Too high disk activity

[M. A.1]

While I'm using my computer normally without touching anything Dropbox related, the Dropbox process (I have a system monitor installed that shows disk usage and which process is using it the most among other things) randomly and strangely frequently uses large amounts of my HDD's processing capacity to a point where it causes stuttering in video playback, video games, and other applications that have higher priority for my computer use. This was also verified by simply shutting down Dropbox, since the problem goes away with that.

Since I'm the only user of this account as well, I'm the only one causing changes to it, so there's no new files being received or files being modified which are pushed to me to cause any of this either.

Also, I don't have an anti-virus installed that performs real-time scanning on reads/writes to interfere with this.

I presume this is Dropbox scanning the folders for changes, but I don't think it should cause this much disk activity or at least not such huge spikes for it. And I'm fairly sure the OS has file system notification API (change notifications, like Linux has inotify) that would remove the need to scan the file system for changes in such old fashioned and resource intense manner.

[William S.28]

The first post on this issue is back in 2015. Does anyone at Dropbox respond to these questions? This really slows down my computer.

[M. A.1]

As far as I can tell, they just ignore these. I still have the problem I originally reported, hence why I keep Dropbox off from autostart and only briefly launch it to sync my files. Been looking for alternatives (really should give Google Drive another try or something), but I haven't had a pressing need for one, so I've stuck around only because of that.

[Leosthenes P.]

When I transferred dropbox folder from my primary (small capacity) SSD to a secondary large HDD (WDC WD500AAKX-001CA0) the disk started to suffer of high disk usage. It is always in 100% disk usage. Also all processes in my PC slowed down. I cannot use my pc while dropbox is in sync mode. I have to pause synchronization to work with other programs. Is there any way to reduce the disk usage?

*Update. There was a file in the dropbox folder that was "unreadable". I removed it and now the disk is working normally.

[slmetcalf]

I have the same issue and it only started happening a few days ago right before I had to reinstall windows.    It seems to be a big problem as I like to keep it open so i can access files I need but keeping it open renders my system useless and no other tasks can be done.  Even just starting it up with nothing else it gives me high disk usage. I am also a paid user. Very inconvenient to shut it down and only accessing my files from dropbox website but that is only way I found i can get things done.

[joenoe]

hey could u plz tell me what file that was unreadable? my problem started two weeks ago (100% disk usage). since then i formatted my computer twice, downgraded to windows 8 and replaced my 1 tera hard drive with a 250 gb ssd (!). only to realize it was dropbox sync process that was the problem all along.

[Sanchez]

Hi, 

Thanks for posting in our forum! 

It seems that you and many others are having a similar issue with high disk activity relating to the Dropbox desktop application. We would like to know as many details as possible regarding these cases, so that we can investigate further. 

We encourage you to submit a support request via our website here: https://www.dropbox.com/contact 

Thanks,

Sanchez

[Christopher H.18]

I went around and around with support for this issue. Complete waste of time. 

[joenoe]

its too late for that sanchez.. happily using google drive now

[Renato B.]

Yeah, I loved dropbox concept since I knew it, and it worked very well at begining, but little issues like this are driving me to think about alternatives to dropbox.
If somebody is implementing a better usable product, certainly I will consider switch.

I'm hoping that the "Infinite Project" change this performance issues, since dropbox will have kernel access I belive it will be possible to work in a smartest way.
The way dropbox watch for file-changes don't seems to be the best way.

Besides performance issues it has another issues.
Another day I was planning to make big changes in my dropbox file structure, so I fully-synced my two computers(A and B) to make sure computer 'B' had'nt nothing to upload and computer 'A' nothing to download.
So, two computers with "green sync icon" I shutdown computer 'B' and start my reorganization in computer 'A'.
When I had finished with the changes I start computer 'B' to receive the changes, but to my surprise, dropbox start to upload old computer 'B' folders to dropbox again, making hundreds of duplicate files and folders.

I really think dropbox should take care of these types of issues before spend time developing "google drive style" features!

[Murat I.]

Looks like buying 1TB space has no benefit in real terms... I'll look into cancelling my subscription...

Windows 10 keeps going 100% disk and freeze everything as soon as dropbox syncs..