Dropbox keeps saying "Your hard drive is almost full" but it isn't

[Bonnie K.4]

I keep getting message pop-ups from Dropbox saying "Your hard drive is almost full. Use Smart Sync to free up space."

This is completely untrue. I have 60GB of free space on my computer, and I have only used 1.2TB of my 5TB online Dropbox storage, so neither my hard drive nor my cloud stotage is almost full.

What is going on?

[Mark]

Do you only have the one hard drive?

How big are the files you are trying to sync?

[Bonnie K.4]

I have the Dropbox account synced to two computers, Again today I got this message on both machines. It seems to pop up whenever my Mac has less than 45 GB free and when my PC has less than 60 GB free. Which is nowhere close to "Your hard drive is almost full." I am not trying to sync any large files. This message just comes up when the hard drive space drops below a certain amount. Is there a way to turn this off? My hard drive is not almost full when I have 60GB free and I don't want to keep seeing this incorrect pop-up.

[Lusil · Accepted solution]

Hi there @Bonnie K.4! From the amount of space you mention that you have in total, it sounds like you’re on a Dropbox Business plan. Do you by any chance have Smart Sync enabled? If so, have you got any files online-only at all? Could you also please check the actual file sizeby:

1. Ctrl+click on a file.
2. Select Get Info
3. Find the file size and in brackets you should see the size it takes up on your disk. If the file is set to online-only, then the size on disk should be minuscule.

Let me know what you find and I’ll make sure to get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks! 

[Bonnie K.4]

Hi Lusil,

Yes, I do have Smart Sync enabled. I have some files set as Online-only. I just checked the file size for one of the Online-only files and it says Size: 627MB, Size on disk: 4.00kb. So that seems to be working correctly. I checked a few more Online-only files and they all say they only take up 4.00kb.

Thanks.

[Lusil · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your prompt reply here, @Bonnie K.4, much appreciated!

Since you mention that:

---

@Bonnie K.4 wrote:

I just checked the file size for one of the Online-only files and it says Size: 627MB, Size on disk: 4.00kb. So that seems to be working correctly. I checked a few more Online-only files and they all say they only take up 4.00kb.

-it seems that Smart Sync is indeed working as normal and the error that you’re seeing is OS related. For this reason, I would kindly recommend getting in touch with Apple support for more info on this. 

If you do have though any other questions, don’t hesitate to let us know and we’ll make sure to get back to you as soon as possible. 

[Btomtom5]

@Lusil I understand that this is a quirk of OS X and not a Dropbox bug but I pay for Dropbox with the expectation that smart sync is fully functional regardless of where the failure happens. It would be deeply appreciated if the Dropbox team can escalate this issue and press Apple to prioritize this issue. We as individuals have no leveraging power in explaining to Apple that this a significant issue that needs to be fixed. Thank you so much. I love Dropbox, but this is making my computer unusable. OS won't let me download any more files because it thinks the hard drive is full when it is not.

[gguenerais]

Hi,

I'm running into the same issue and this solution is not helpful as it suggests to fix it myself.

This should be the dropbox responsibility to make my dropbox working in my standard environment. Isn't?

[Fiona]

Hey there @gguenerais, 

Sorry to hear that the solution here does not help in your case. I would like to investigate. I understand you are also getting the "Your hard drive is almost full" error message. Correct? What plan do you have? Are you using Smart Sync already? Is it not responding? 

If so please let me know the following: 

1. What version of Dropbox are you running there? What is your OS version?
2. What is your syncing status? Hover over the Dropbox icon on your task bar to see it. 
3. Show us how much space your files take up in your Hard drive at the time.

Feel free to attach screenshots. 

Thank you!

[ecko]

Maybe @gguenerais has already resolved the issue? but I am also still having the same issue. So, i'll answer these questions.

1.  Dropbox 105.4.651 / macOS Catalina 10.15.14

2. Oscillates from "Can't sync files" to "Up to date". (Quitting/restarting dropbox can temporarily solve the sync issue)

3.