We are aware of the issue with the badge emails resending to everyone, we apologise for the inconvenience - learn more here.

Forum Discussion

adelaidesean's avatar
adelaidesean
New member | Level 2
3 years ago

download from cloud to external drive

Questions like this have been asked before, but I haven't found an answer yet. My apologies if I missed something.

 

I am going to Antarctica for a year, and my access to the internet will not be guaranteed. I wish, therefore, to create a local back-up of the data I have stored in Dropbox. I know that I could, in theory, download everything to my laptop and copy it from there - but the internal hard drive of my laptop is not sufficient to contain all the data I have saved to Dropbox. Neither do I want to set an external drive as the default location for my Dropbox to sync to, because I read that there are risks involved in doing this. How, then, can I download everything from the could to the external drive directly?

  • The only way to do that is to manually download via the website and save it manually to the drive (as in select each file or folder and choose the download location as the external drive)

  • Mark's avatar
    Mark
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II

    The only way to do that is to manually download via the website and save it manually to the drive (as in select each file or folder and choose the download location as the external drive)

    • adelaidesean's avatar
      adelaidesean
      New member | Level 2

      Thanks. I was hoping that wouldn't be the case, but it's good to know for sure.

      • MattHeck's avatar
        MattHeck
        New member | Level 2

        It's not. 


        I just searched around, and found lots of terrible solutions, until I realized a very easy solve. In Chrome, or Safari go to Preferences / Downloads / and change the download location to your external hard drive. Done. 

        Anything you download will now go directly to the folder you chose on the external hard drive. Not just Dropbox, but everything. So make sure to change it back when you're done.  Or not. As ya wish.

        Come on thumbs up, gimme gimme. I don't usually write these things. Cheers!




  • MattHeck's avatar
    MattHeck
    New member | Level 2

    I just searched around, and found lots of terrible solutions, until I realized a very easy solve. In Chrome, or Safari go to Preferences / Downloads / and change the download location to your external hard drive. Done. 

    Anything you download will now go directly to the folder you chose on the external hard drive. Not just Dropbox, but everything. So make sure to change it back when you're done.  Or not. As ya wish.

    Come on thumbs up, gimme gimme. I don't usually write these things. Cheers!

  • son_ste's avatar
    son_ste
    New member | Level 2

    salve, vorrei sapere se c'è la possibilità di scaricare i file residenti in dropbox direttamente su hdd esterno senza dover prima scaricarli sul hdd locale e poi copiarli su quello esterno. Avendo tanti dati su dropbox non potrei scaricare tutto su hdd locale perchè lo spazio non sarebbe abbastanza, chiedo quindi se c'è la possibilità di farlo direttamente su hdd esterno. grazie

    • Walter's avatar
      Walter
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

      Hi son_ste, I just merged your post under this discussion as I think your query echoes the OP (original post) here. 

       

      Feel free to take a look and let us know if you have any other questions. 

       

      ---

       

      Ciao son_ste, ho appena unito il tuo post a questa discussione poiché penso che la tua domanda faccia eco all'OP (post originale) qui.

       

      Sentiti libero di dare un'occhiata e facci sapere se hai altre domande.

About View, download, and export

Need support with viewing, downloading, and exporting files and folders from your Dropbox account? Find help from the Dropbox Community.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!