With a 300k File Limit - Does Dropbox Really Provide Business Solutions?

I've been reading all of this because I'm trying the beta new version of Dropbox Business.  I am my only team member, BUT I have over 800,000 files.  ALL of these files I have on my own hardware that is raided to prevent the possibility of losing any data EVEN if Dropbox goes belly up.  SO my question is this: since I do NOT sync more than 500,000 files on any one of my computers (I have a structural engineering firm and run a variety of computers for various tasks) is that why I haven't had even ONE incident with Dropbox? And these services CAN go belly up real fast without warning.  I have had a few of these services over the years and far and away the worst was LiveDrive (this is the only drive service I have actually lost data with and it REALLY HURT), and OneDrive didn't work out either.  I have Google drive but don't use it much.  Do you think it's actually better?  Thanks for the feedback.

By the way, I can tell you all that you really must keep copies of your files on a hardware drive in a computer at your site, and it needs to be RAIDED so you have warning when a drive is going belly up so you can do a swap and KEEP ALL THE FILES ALIVE.  These online services are for CONVENIENCE, but we must stop thinking they're SECURE.  You have to have your own fail-safe.  I know that's expensive and not terribly convenient but it 'is what it is'.  There is no other fail-safe approach.  I have about 30TB online, but I also have every spec of it on my own fail-safed hardware.

hey joe, so i tried them all, the only one that no issues with file size & number and synced flawlessly was pcloud. they had the cloud only feature that dropbox introduced now ever since, but you cant search for files in your finder, only online. and their support is a bit slow. so when i heard about that dropbox update i thought i'd give it a go. i have cut down my file number from like 2 million files to 200000 by zipping a lot of folders, so the hardware copy contains all the original parts and dropbox only zipped backups where possible or necessary because of file numbers.

what always set dropbox apart from drive is the way it down/uploads..drive would need half an hour to start as it syncs all files everytime it starts...and then it would continue where it took off. for me this didnt work as it **bleep**ed up a lot of folders when i migrated files and their upload/download hierachy is somewhat linear, which means what comes first uploads first, that made things really messy. dropbox can upload various files at once, and i'm working with music - so this is essential: while uploading a big (recording) file i can at the same time update my program file, which inherits all the new important information, but is very low in size. so long story short - that didnt work with drive, it made things VERY VERY messy. pcloud did the job but i can search only online, ia also tried SYNC which worked, but has no search function at all (!!!) - and well so i'm back to dropbox with a new issue, that i'm trying to solve. their new smart sync feature unsmartly syncs folders its not supposed to. and it always happens when i'm workig on mobile data so just yesterday i wondered why my internet is gone and it was because of dropbox silently syncing a 10gb folder in the background, that i havent even selected, or needed or accessed otherwise. so apart from their file size issue (maybe this is exactly related to this??) they seem to have brought up new issues with the new features. i hope this is getting solved soon, as i really dont have the nerve for that and working only with hardware copies is not what i intend to. i can update this here, once they (hopefully) took care of this. 

Thank you very much for your feedback!  I will keep local 'hardcopies' of everything because I don't actually trust any of these services.  I've been thinking that maybe the reason I haven't had issues is because I don't actually have more than 300,000 files on ONE computer(?), not sure. The one concern I have for this upcoming 'update' is that it is going to online-only sync when it updates apparently.  Then I guess I have to go back in and re-sync all my devices.  That's a little scary and I'm thinking about backing up all of my computers on external HDs to make sure I don't lose ANYTHING.  I have (4) 10TB WDs and I think I'll just cover my butt here.

Jane,

This is completely different than what I've been told by support.  After 37 days, I've been told basically that nothing is being done to fix my problem because I am trying to sync more than 300,000 files which is unsupported.

if i have eg. 100 files and i use winrar to compress them to 1 rar file do they count as 1 file or 100?

I had the same issue: synced 2.3 million files without realizing how many nested files were in an iPhoto library. Very slow support, finally got to a high enough level that they gave me something that worked. Here are the detailed instructions (for Macs):

If you can not apply Selective sync settings you will need to preform advanced reinstall and ensure that you apply Selective sync settings before syncing your data to your desktop folder.

To ensure that the software is working correctly, I’d like you to do a complete reinstall to try to fix the problem. This will not affect or remove the files in your Dropbox folder.

Please save and quit all programs accessing files in the Dropbox folder, and then follow these instructions:

Note: Please be sure to take note or take a screenshot of any Selective Sync settings you may have applied as well as the location of your Dropbox folder (if not in the default location) prior to re-installing, as you will need to match these settings upon re-install.

1. Stop Dropbox (If needed):

• Click the Dropbox icon in the menu bar at the top of your screen
• Click on the gear icon in the Notifications panel and select 'Quit Dropbox'

1. Download the newest version:

https://www.dropbox.com/downloading

1. Open your Terminal app (Located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal)

2. Copy and paste the following lines into the Terminal, ONE AT A TIME, and press ENTER after each one. PLEASE make sure you copy and paste these commands (don't type them by hand), as getting them wrong could cause some harm. You'll be prompted for your computer's admin password (not your Dropbox password) after entering the first command. Keep in mind that the password field in the terminal will remain blank as you type your password. After you type it, just press ENTER. You'll know that these instructions complete normally once the initial line of text (called prompt) comes up again:

sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME"

sudo chown -R "$USER" ~/Dropbox

sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox

sudo mv ~/.dropbox ~/.Trash/dropbox.old

sudo chmod -N ~

sudo mv /Library/DropboxHelperTools ~/DropboxHelperTools.old

Please note that once the prompt displays, the instruction completed the requested task and is ready for the next command. If the command returns an error or does not respond after an hour, you may want to try restarting your computer and try these steps again.

1. Delete the Dropbox application from the Applications folder. You may need to provide your computer password in order to perform this action.

2. Open the .dmg file from step # 2 and double click the Dropbox icon to install Dropbox.

3. When Dropbox has finished installing, during the initial setup and sign in process, apply any Selective Sync settings you may have had prior to the reinstall and select the Dropbox folder location (if not in the default location).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Because this process removes the previous settings and configuration, if you wish to avoid re-downloading your Dropbox content, you will need to manually choose the location for Dropbox to sync to, otherwise you will create a new Dropbox folder which will start to download your content again.

To select your already established folder on your drive, after signing in and choosing which folders to sync, and before you click on "Open my Dropbox folder", you should see an "Advanced Settings" link, click on this.

Then you can choose the parent folder of the already established Dropbox folder. For example, if you have your Dropbox folder in the path "/Volumes/DifferentPlace/Dropbox (Team)" you'll want to select the folder "/Volumes/DifferentPlace/".

At the end of this process, after clicking "Open my Dropbox folder", it might take some time to re-index the files and sync any pending changes.

Please note that any changes made to the files in the Dropbox folder, the web interface or other linked devices while the folder was "off-line", will generate conflicted copies:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/36

Finally, this process only works when linking to the exact same account that was previously linked to this computer. If you'd like to merge accounts, please refer to the following Help Center article:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/9104

Hi Jane,

Thanks; I did.

However, considering that all of your competitors, except Box (so far), have moved away from limited # files sync'd, I see no alternative to switching to OneDrive or Google as much as I do not want to.  It's nice to hear you say your team is finally looking beyond this limit, but the messages I get loud and clear from support is that Dropbox simply will not support, under any circumstance, sync'ing more than 300k files.  Considering that many trillions of photos alone are taken each year, this limit seems pretty stone age.

Yes, this helped... it helped me move to another provider. Very likely Google.

I would like to start with Im no great fan of dropbox they were great around 2010 but hitting 2020 its just OMG the same issues still present, like WTH!

That being said, I manage a 3TB pro account (we used to have DB Teams but I only ever needed one account just the >1TB space it gave us)

This is currently at 2.2TB in 625,000+ files & 130,000+ folders (like OneDrive folders count in the file count for DB see insert)

Now syncing a new machine or resyncing an existing one IS A NIGHTMARE of time!

Wo be any DB employee who ever tells me to resync to fix an issue. Im talking a week+.

But unlike everyone else Im not overly experencing "delays" with more than 300,000 files. 

One thing that might be relevant (unsure) is I switched OFF SMART SYNC at the account level on the web site. Using only SELECTIVE SYNC some machines have heavy syncing with around 700K in files/folders and some lite with 75K files/folders.

On the heavy file/folder machines  the filecache.dbx is at 2GB and my sigstore.dbx is 10GB. This 10GB might be important as my understanding is DB slows down as the SQL Lite used for databasing doesnt handle 10GB+ files very well so mabye im hovering just on it with 700K?!?!?! Which leads me to think about depth of tree with larger deep trees needing more DBX file and taking you over the 10GB mark? See file names are not stored in folders inside the DBX file each file PATH and NAME are stored for each file some more down in the deeppth you have files the lower that number gets?!?!? (all conjecture of course)

For me the DB app never spikes above 2 to 3GB memory doing this only during soem resync activity and mostly hovers under 200meg

Compared to OneDrive thats hovers around 1GB sycning the same stuff.  My Onc drive root location is in the dropbox folder like this \DROPBOX\@OD so anything in OneDrive syncs to DB and anything in the DB od folder syncs to OneDrive (half to a OneDrive for business user folder and the other half to a sharepoint site (yes i do know they are both SPO sites))

So to those having issues I would suggest at least trying the client without SMART SYNC which really you only need if your short of space, and I would rather have it faster & working than saving a $100 on a smaller drive. Go 5TB drives! :-P

( i have edited this a few times so might have some junk typos etc or nonsense setences soory :-/  )