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Forum Discussion
secret_username1
2 years agoHelpful | Level 6
Dropbox limits on zipped files preventing downloading as backup to external drive.
Have ~1.5 TB of files on Dropbox that I'm trying to backup to an external hard drive.
My initial plan was to copy the local Dropbox folder from my PC to the external drive. However, I'd previou...
Rich
Super User II
secret_username1 wrote:
Any ideas on how to download all of my data from Dropbox to an external disk? I don't even know what Dropbox's zip limits.
Downloading a folder as a Zip file has a limit of 250GB and fewer than 10,000 files. If either of those limits are reached, Dropbox will be unable to create the Zip file.
You'll either need to download in smaller batches, or allow the files to sync to your computer so you can move them to the external drive using Explorer.
secret_username1
2 years agoHelpful | Level 6
The limits only apply to Dropbox Basic, no? From here:
"Dropbox Plus, Family, Professional, and Standard: 1 TB of bandwidth and unlimited file downloads per day."
Can you point me to where I should go to allow the files to be on my local machine? No clear way to do this en masse given I have hundreds of thousands of files in deeply nested directories.
- Rich2 years agoSuper User II
secret_username1 wrote:
The limits only apply to Dropbox Basic, no? From here:
"Dropbox Plus, Family, Professional, and Standard: 1 TB of bandwidth and unlimited file downloads per day."
You're confusing different features. That line refers to shared links, not the process of downloading a folder as a Zip file.
Can you point me to where I should go to allow the files to be on my local machine?Right-click on a file or folder (or select multiple and right-click) and select Make available offline. Keep in mind that with that many files, it will take a long time for Dropbox to sync everything back down to your computer. I recently marked a couple hundred thousand files as Online-only and it took a couple of hours. Be patient and let it work.
- secret_username12 years agoHelpful | Level 6
Ah, I didn't see the difference. Good catch! Clarifications about clicking "Make Available Offline":
1. If I wanted all devices synced to my Dropbox account to have local copies of all files, would I need to click it on each device?
2. Supposing I clicked it on each device, will all future changes to the files stored in the cloud be automatically downloaded on all devices? Or would I need to routinely click this button in the future because Dropbox will continue to convert files to online-only?
With this info I should be good to go.
- Rich2 years agoSuper User II
secret_username1 wrote:
1. If I wanted all devices synced to my Dropbox account to have local copies of all files, would I need to click it on each device?
2. Supposing I clicked it on each device, will all future changes to the files stored in the cloud be automatically downloaded on all devices? Or would I need to routinely click this button in the future because Dropbox will continue to convert files to online-only?
1. Yes.
2. If you're on Windows and you have the New files default option in Dropbox Preferences set to Available offline, then the files will download to the computer. I don't this this option exists on Mac any longer.
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