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!!!!!

[Richard P.]

"Users/MyMacBookAir/Public/DropBox/Archive Photo 2/London Trip Videos/London Trip Videos from Panasonic Videocam"

That DropBox is actually unrelated to this service - its a folder created by Apple for people to drop files into your computer when you turn that ability on on your Mac. Completely and utterly not related to Dropbox.com which is why you aren't seeing them synced.

Sorry, but it would seem that Dropbox isn't to blame in this situation 🙂

[Elyse g.2]

Thank you, Richard!  But how are other people dropping these files into my computer, if they are my files?  Not sure how that happens.  So, you are saying that there is something on Macs that is called "Dropbox"?  That seems odd, since in at least 5 hours with AppleCare, none of the advisors or their supervisors mentioned this!  How do I turn it off?  

Thanks again for any solutions you can provide.

[DaveC2]

@*Elyse g. *; I would suggest you ring Applecare back and tell them what dicks they are then.

10 seconds of searching on google and I found this.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18716?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

[Elyse g.2]

WOW.  Dave, that is both great news and ridiculous news, as I think my total hours on phone is something like 6-8 hrs in last 2 days.  -- I myself did not notice the difference between "Drop Box" (with a space between words, which is the Apple OS feature)  and "Dropbox" (no space between words, which is the 3rd party software) until I noticed it today and pointed it out in the file paths I've been discussing with 2 different AppleCare supervisors.

The one today said he was completely unaware of it, had to go to someone else and find out about it while  was on hold!

He says its a permissions issue.  We managed to clear out about a third of my total disc space by deleting duplicate files (a couple of nights ago I had downloaded a program called Araxis that finds and deletes duplicate files), and clearing out the Drop Box (with space) folder on my hard drive.

I don't know why all my Google-ing and searches didn't get me to the page you pulled up. Maybe because I didn't put a space between the "Drop" and the "Box"  

I don't know why Apple and Dropbox aren't suing each other for using the same name and confusing Apple's customers. Or maybe they did. 

Anyway, I'm giving you an "up vote" for whatever that's worth!  THANK YOU!

[DaveC2]

No worries, perhaps google are using smart logic, they know your using an apple (via browser ids) and might have dropbox so didnt display you the apple vs dropbox pages, hopping you will get annoyed enough you will by google drive 😛

(conspiracies everywhere!)

I Voted up Richard P. for the real hit on it, as I looked at the path and was like WTH is the folder doing in there?

[Elyse g.2]

Ha! Yes you're right.  I would love to find a search engine based purely on relevance.  it's getting very out of hand on Google,  thanks for reminding me!!!

[Tine J.]

Hey guys.

I got the same problem.. but in my case, its dropbox and not macs drop box who are doing it.. Im going insane!

Users/Privat/ - and together with Desktop, Documents, Downloads, music, public and so on is my Dropbox - Dropbox (old (1)) and Dropbox (old (2)).

I can't work because dropbox takes all my space on my imac.. I believe that if I delete the folders I delete my dropbox content...

Please help.. I got clients who are waiting for there orders 😞

[alison r.2]

I don't know if this is exactly the same issue or if it will solve the different problems, but I too had a dropbox (version 3.17.32) folder that contained multiple duplicate files (labelled xx(2) xx(3) etc. My duplicate file finder could not 'see' them, and therefore could not delete them. It came up with a list of zero duplicates.

I have now run the same exercise on my work computer (on both machines dropbox was saying it was 'synced'), and magic - it has found  1900 duplicates. No idea what has gone on. But it may pay to look at other computers that are supposed to be synced to the cloud dropbox 

[elyse g.]

Thanks everyone,

I'm sorry not to have posted this earlier but my PROBLEM IS SOLVED!!!

It turns out that there is a Drop Box file in Mac's OS but it is not the same as the Dropbox website/software, where we are now.  it's very confusing, but as I recall, the Mac OS file has a space between the 2 words and this website doesn't. 

Let's hope Apple's Applecare people forward what I told them about how confusing this is.  Can't believe there isn't some trademark claim going in either directions. 

So, after some struggle with the Apple folks, this turned out to be the source of the confusion.  It had to do with the Mac OS, not Dropbox.

[Adam S.56]

Drop is duplicating all my files on all our computers filling up the hard drives, how do I stop this from happening? Who at drop box authorized this and what is their contact information?