Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users

jmeredi2 

Thanks for the info. Well I hope for Dropbox you won't ditch them for 1700 USD a year that'd be a shame 🙂

I have an extra question: with your 6 user system and unlimited plan, do you see a green tick on your external disk folders/files? How do you sync your 30-40TB of data across your individual computers and as a team, is it a local access for each of the 6 users from their computers to a large disk or RAID system?

I can't see the green tick on my shared external disk (I see the green tick only on my local /Dropbox folder) but the sync works though. Do you guys all see a green ticket in your Business system?

Ok thanks jmeredi2 noted. So you're the only one having the entire Business folders synced, right? And the 5 other members only have a few TBs each? How do you store 30/40TB locally yourself?

So it turns out https://www.dropbox.com/backup/all shows the sync status and the tick there instead, I'm cool with that.

Pretty useful feature indeed Dropbox to be able to sync external drives.

Please don't change this feature on Mac please 🙂 the people here are right and I fully support them.

jmeredi2 I tested sync.com and while it is ⅔ of the cost for unlimited and has point-to-point encryption (which is far superior than what DB offers), it is much slower for up/down xfer. I suspect its partly because of the encryption key, but that's only a guess. They capped out at 40Mbps I think. Possibly much less. Might have been as low as 4Mbps. Can't remember exactly what the limit was but it would have taken over a year to upload our assets vs 2 months for DB.

Their security protocol is great tho. Government's have confirmed its okay to use at this time. DB is not an approved supplier tho. 

We have 2.5Gb internet here so it wasn't an issue with our local connection.

shinbeth that 'backup a drive' function is great, but it's not as flexible as the main tool.  From what I understand, it doesn't allow control over folders and files the same way. Maybe I'm mistaken, but to restore the data locally, I think you would have to download the full drive? That's what the DB rep told me during our testing phase.

You can backup a drive, make changes to that drive, and sync for safety, but if you need to clear local drive space up, I don't believe that tool is a viable workflow solution. Also, there was some limits on size of drive and number of files in some documentation I read. 

I see it as a smart way to backup camera cards, but I'd use the main DB tool for the actual post-production process between multiple users (clients, editors, director, sound-designer, VFX, etc).

Happy you see the value of External Drive workflow. It really is powerful. 

KyleKoch thanks for the extra info that's really useful.

Yes indeed it's not exactly the same and as flexible as main local 'Dropbox' indeed so I keep it more for extra 'lighter' data (videos, archives...) I wish to backup on my hard drive until Apple releases a local 16TB drive option which will allow me to transfer everything on the main local Dropbox. The same way I intended to do it with Google Drive or another cloud, but since I was never convinced by Dropbox alternatives, this way I can keep everything under Dropbox roof, even though for now it's not perfect, I feel safer not to lose any data if something happened to my extra hard drive.

For the main data for sure I keep everything on main local SSD because like you guys in the field of music/video production I know what you mean, those files are too big and when editing in heavy softwares my experience with external hard drives is that it's never as fast as and reliable as Apple's local SSD. And yes especially for clients you want to keep everything safe and without hurdle indeed.

So yeah nice to have this feature and at least I don't have to pay extra with another cloud service, and use a multi cloud mounter too, for the time being.

shinbeth the architecture of the machines I build tend to have a fast SSD for OS, fast SSD for cache, fast Media Raid or SSD (sometimes a dedicated Read and a dedicated Write). Having the multiple data channels via the mainboard can make a difference in stability and speed for Editing Software. More crashes occur when everything is driving from a single SSD (especially if it is the OS and Programs drive).  When it gets even more intense is with multi-cam work where you have several streams of video simultaneously.  To be honest, I can't imagine paying the apple tax on a 16TB SSD internally; not when equivalent nvmeSSD raids can deliver the same speeds or higher for a fraction of the cost.

KyleKoch 

That's a very good point indeed, what setup would you recommend for me to have like say more or less 16TB SSD nvmeSSD Raid equivalent (rack + drives - which models and brands)? Is there pre-built solutions on the market or do I need to mount everything myself? And how to operate the sync with Dropbox, is it through a software located on the main computer? Can it be controlled at distance too btw?

So I have 2T of storage on Dropbox and only 200G on the iCloud Drive.  Moving all my Dropbox data to the iCloud Drive will exceed the 200G capacity.  Then I guess I get to buy more storage from Apple.  Thanks a lot Apple.  A bigger problem is that this Apple change may bankrupt Dropbox and then I will have no offsite storage at all.  I have an old Windows 10 computer and I might be able to put all the Dropbox files on it and share them on my network.  Don't know if this will work but I will try.  I have used Dropbox over a decade and love it.  I never have to worry if I am working on the most current version of a file on multiple computers.

@shinbeth KyleKoch yes, can I just echo comments, in the desperate hope that DB are monitoring the thread and will manage our expectations on this proportionally.

We are part of huge enterprise team subscription- many petabytes, perhaps our part of that operation has 100TB. Although not specifically designed for the task, we work entirely out of Dropbox Sync, to identical named external volumes, for video editing and collaboration. We simply sync the folder we need for the week and maintain a number of other folders for generic assets. Dropbox is our Asset Manager!

It's not about drive speed, it's not about capacity per se, it's about headroom. We need at least 10TB of overhead, to effectively selectively sync and bring offline (stupid word they should have left it as "local") media assets.

When done we simply let it go. Space is effectively infinite in the Cloud, although we do archive and manage it periodically. It's a profoundly efficient workflow, that will eventually overtake on-site location monolithic media servers, for content production.

One issue is that the local caches do not empty, for up to 3 days after making files "online" only. There is a procedure for deleting this, to clear space, it's a safeguard for when files may not have been uploaded, but works against our workflow. I'd like an undo feature plus a way of space being immediately released. Even more reason for extra storage headroom. You do not want to accidentally unhitch the wrong material, because you are running out of local storage!

There's a lot of binary and uninformed traffic on this thread, about Dropbox generally, and red herrings about speed, that are either irrelevant, or just not true. It works, it's efficient, the LAN share feature is astonishing, for locally sharing assets, without recourse to the cloud. The whole thing gives us distributed resilience across a number of Macs, with access anywhere in the world. That is big deal.

We have to be able to continue to sync to external volumes. Apple have depreciated an API, this is what they do, they have their reasons and unfortunately it's on Dropbox to work out a solution, to maintain the service. Otherwise it becomes useless for us.

I'll just add that, if you have a decent cabled internet and sync only a small number of folders in Preferences and then selectively sync beyond, the operation is flawless. Dropbox is very good indeed.

Bluebicycle thank you very much for adding your thoughts.  

I'm still INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATED this thread is STILL MARKED as "SOLVED."  

It is not solved.  

IT IS NOT SOLVED.  

IT IS NOT SOLVED.  

Kicking the can down the road, aka "we won't upgrade you now but we are not officially saying we will support external drives" is NOT A SOLVE.  

@dropbox please please do not mark this as solved.  

Hi ... Not sure if this helps .... Windows NTFS can handle a 16TB partition if the cluster size is the default 4096 bytes.

After many, many years with Dropbox and partly because of this issue we have migrated over to Office 365 & Onedrive with better results.

Don't update.  Have been fighting a selective sync problem for the last 24 hours.  Only solution is so far is to make a 17G folder download only.  Deleted it 20 times, and it always came back.  Then it duplicated itself with two 17G folders.  What a mess.

Has anyone tried using a symbolic link?

DissatisfiedUser99 my upgraded Mac laptop will not sync either.  SO FRUSTRATING!!!!!   

I'm on the latest beta build v170.3.5866 and still syncing to an external drive. Has this been resolved?

Edit: on an M2 Mac.

We use the dropbox company wide in a similar manner - works flawlessly.

A shame to see Dropbox not offering a solution here.

spencerkm1 did you find out whether it's been resolved or not? I've not yet upgraded from OS 12.6 because of this.

iagdotme 

If by resolved you mean that they have decided to do what's right and fix this, then no it's not. It looks like they have decided to stick their thumb in all of their customers eyes. 

If by resolved you mean has the question been resolved, then technically yes. They marked it resolved. But it is far from it and numerous customers have complained that they are arbitrarily and unilaterally marking things solved that are in no way solved. 

Welcome to drop your box. They have clearly dropped their box and can't find it anything without it. I think we need to get them a clap on. That way once they've fallen and can't get up they can at least clap on the light so they can find their way out of there.