Will dropbox folders set to Online-only return to said status on their own?

[klepp0906]

I intend to use dropbox for a nightly backup of some important files.  they dont change every night, but they do change frequently enough.  dropbox is also on my ssd so its important that I keep them as "online-only" as they are back ups.

Through some quick trial runs I've noticed anything that changes will remove its online-only status.   Each time ive gone through and re-set it to online only manually.  

curious if this is necessary or if since the parent folder was originally designated as online-only, it's going to return to such on its own?  if so, timeframe?  otherwise doing this daily is going to get old.  the whole point of running a task/script is to remove the manual intervention from the solution 😛

[Rich]

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@klepp0906 wrote:

curious if this is necessary or if since the parent folder was originally designated as online-only, it's going to return to such on its own?

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A file or folder will not return to an online-only status on its own. That's not how it's meant to work.

Your computer can only interact with files that are local, so any time an online-only file is accessed, it's downloaded back to the computer and set to local so it can be opened. Since Dropbox has no way of knowing when you're done with that file, it remains local until you set it back to online-only.

[klepp0906]

thanks for the reply.  do we know if theres any CLI exposed to control this behavior ala script?  at the end of the backup i could trigger certain folders to go back to online only.

I have to test more but i dont "think" if nothing has changed it will pull it out of online only and assuming that is the case i do wonder if something does change if it will only pull that subfolder/file out and leave the rest be.

guess ill have to test more but when youre talking about hundreds of gigs being tied up on an ssd it becomes problematic.

getting over 100tb backed up properly is the pits >.<