Dropbox is creating multiple copies of all my files and saving them to my hard drive, to the point where my entire HD storage is full. WHY? HOW CAN I STOP THIS?

[Elyse g.2]

I have a MacBook Air and do not keep a lot of large files (photos, music, movies, audio etc) on my hard drive. But the other day I got a message that I was out of disc storage!
When I investigated it, I discovered that nearly every file on my computer had been duplicated multiple times and given a Dropbox file location. However, when I look in my dropbox folders and online, the documents are not in Dropbox! WHAT IS GOING ON AND HOW CAN I DELETE ALL THESE DUPLICATE FILES AND STOP THIS!!!!!

[aXg]

This is also happening on one of our clients computers.  It just started last week and the duplicates are only showing up on Macs and not Windows computers which tells me there is a bug in the Dropbox desktop app for Macs.  Last week a DB tech gave the instructions to purge the Mac DB cache.  It worked for one folder,  but now the duplicates have returned.  Many of the duplicates have the file name of (deleted .......) at the end.

This is a very serious problem especially for people with limited hard drive space,  and seeing how long this has been going on tells me DB has no way to solve this.  This is a bug in the Mac desktop app and has been going on for over a year looking at the date of the original post!!!!

If the next level of tech support cannot fix this tomorrow I will suggest to my client that they move to a different file sharing system and I will also see if a class action law suit can be started.

[richk1]

a bit tricky to execute, but this worked perfectly:
http://www.imore.com/how-sync-your-documents-desktop-and-any-other-folder-dropbox

One important note though: even once I created the symlink, it didn't automatically sync to dropbox as the article indicates. I had to create a folder in dropbox (named mine "laptop files") and then dragged the symlink shortcuts into the "laptop files" folder and everything syncs perfectly without creating duplicates on my laptop.

[Lifer10 · Accepted solution]

1. Click on the Dropbox icon in your menu bar or system tray.
2. Click on the gear icon and then select Preferences.
3. Click on the Sync icon at the top bar
4. Unclick every folder marked and leave clicked the ones you want to synk on your computer. 
5. Dropbox will erase every copy it made on your computer and will not longer create files on your hard drive.I

I had the same problem and I just figured out how tofix it. Good Luck. 

[This thread is now closed by moderators due to inactivity. If you're experiencing a similar behavior, feel free to start a new discussion in the Dropbox Community here.]