Create, upload, and share
Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.
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
Jane
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support
Did this post help you? If so please give it a Like below.
Did this post fix your issue/answer your question? If so please press the 'Accept as Best Answer' button to help others find it.
Still stuck? Ask me a question! (Questions asked in the community will likely receive an answer within 4 hours!)
Jane
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support
Did this post help you? If so please give it a Like below.
Did this post fix your issue/answer your question? If so please press the 'Accept as Best Answer' button to help others find it.
Still stuck? Ask me a question! (Questions asked in the community will likely receive an answer within 4 hours!)
Dear Jane,
thanks for the informations!
I wonder, why this problems after >Restart< happen not on the Macbook Air, but on the same old 27" Mac? Both have similar systems.
Is there a Tip?
Best regards
Josef
Jane
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support
Did this post help you? If so please give it a Like below.
Did this post fix your issue/answer your question? If so please press the 'Accept as Best Answer' button to help others find it.
Still stuck? Ask me a question! (Questions asked in the community will likely receive an answer within 4 hours!)
I am sorry, I don't see how this answer solves anything.
I have the same problem. My desktop mac (older, but running High Sierra, 32G memory and decent disk space) becomes almost unusable for 10-15 minutes following startup.
I am pretty sure it is Dropbox, because the disk crunching and the slowing down goes away if I turn off Dropbox (or just the sync).
Just now, I know for a fact that *nothing* changed in my files between the time I logged out and then logged back in after ~1 hour. Yet, the whole sync circus started again.
It seems to me that Dropbox simply downloads and uploads every single file if it thinks something changed. Or at least, it does so with way more files than are actually in need of syncing.
Is there anything that can be done to improve this? (I use selective sync as much as possible. ) I do have a lot of files (300Gb), I use this for work. I pay something, I am not sure what level that is. I can't search my email because my computer is stuck with Dropbox syncing ...
(Also, the Dropbox icon has been stuck on "Starting ..." for about three years, but I gave up on that.)
the disk crunching and the slowing down goes away if I turn off Dropbox (or just the sync)
Jane
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support
Did this post help you? If so please give it a Like below.
Did this post fix your issue/answer your question? If so please press the 'Accept as Best Answer' button to help others find it.
Still stuck? Ask me a question! (Questions asked in the community will likely receive an answer within 4 hours!)
I also have the same issue with the MAC being unusable at startup and anytime dropbox is doing some heavy work actually. I ran and installed BlackMagic for MAC and saw that the average read/write speeds on teh HDD were 25/35 mb/s with dropbox running and 50/60 mb/s without dropbox running. Support provided all of the basic things that have already been mentioned to look at and I have less than 20,000 files selectively syned and the system stalls so frequently. After a week or more of waiting for more 'try this and try that', I decided to upgrade to the latest Macbook Pro. I'll find out soon on this new clean install wether dropbox performs well on SSD as compared to the old HDD it was on.
Jane
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support
Did this post help you? If so please give it a Like below.
Did this post fix your issue/answer your question? If so please press the 'Accept as Best Answer' button to help others find it.
Still stuck? Ask me a question! (Questions asked in the community will likely receive an answer within 4 hours!)
Hello Jane,
I am sorry for not getting back after your detailed response.
I do use the System Monitor, but I couldn't put my finger on an instance when Dropbox itself (i.e. a process that clearly relates to Dropbox) would be hogging the CPU. I could see that the disk read / writes was pretty high, but I can't provide a good set of numbers. (That was part of why I never got back, I was hoping in vain to have the time to collect some numbers.)
It looks more like an issue of the way Dropbox and the the Mac's other processes (in particular, mds_stores which relates to Spotlight) interact.
In other developments, I enabled smart sync, and it sems a bit better (upgrading the memory to 64Gb might have helped, too). I do have a lot of files (2 million) but am only using a fraction of the total storage.
My ongoing peeve is that yep, that initial slow-down is still there. The mac is unusable for a few minutes. The other issue that is annoying is that Dropbox seems to spend a lot of time updating folders that I haven't touched for years. As a result, changes in files I do update don't propagate for a long time and I end up with lots of forked versions and occasionally lose work I thought I had saved.
I don't understand how the "sync this file first" feature is supposed to work. Having to click on them one by one by hand kind of defeats the purpose of cloud storage, doesn't it? I run simulations that generate many outputs. I have versions of papers that I want my coworkers to see. I have class folders with subfolders for each student, with further subfolders for their homeworks, etc. etc.
Yes, I could be more organized with my files, and perhaps take old folders off of Dropbox or stop syncing them. But that would require spending a long time sifting through years worth of stuff... again , I thought the point of cloud storage was that (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.
New Mackbook Pro 15inch 2.6GHz with dropbox installed = no more issues with dropbox hogging HDD resources. The SSD is so fast now that I do not even notice the difference anymore. I was unable to use dropbox on the 2011 Macbook Pro or 2011 iMAC 27 inch computer anymore due to the way it uses HDD resources. It was a $3K fix, but fix nonetheless.
Hi there!
If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for a ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.
For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.
If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!