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dgallant's avatar
dgallant
Helpful | Level 5
2 years ago

Restoring backup drive to new hardware

The external drive that I backed up died. I never tested this, but assumed that there was a way to get the files back onto the drive. It is a large folder of folders, but every time I tried to download a child folder I get an error that it contains too many zips. 

 

Is there a fairly standard way to rebuild the external hard drive that I backed up?

 

Can I connect this drive to the machine and let the Dropbox Mac OS App do the work for me?

Cheers, and thanks in advance 

Dropbox Backup
Restore
  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    2 years ago

    Currently, there isn't another method to download the files from the site, aside from what I've mentioned by downloading them in smaller batches. 

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    2 years ago

    Hi there dgallant, sorry to hear about this.

     

    Can you please confirm that you're following these steps? Also, could you send us a screenshot of the exact error you're getting so that we  can have a look too?

     

    How large are the folders you're trying to  download by the way and how many files do they contain approximately?

     

    Let us know more and we'll take it from there. 

    • dgallant's avatar
      dgallant
      Helpful | Level 5
      2 years ago

      Hello

      I reformatted the drive and selected it to be used by the Backup product.
      It looks like I have 2 drives now, one empty, and one with the data that I want to move onto the new drive.

       

      The first drive that was backed up died, but I want the data back on the external hard drive as well as Dropbox Backup.

       

      Is there any way to merge a 2nd device into the first backup snapshot? Better yet, even have it continue on from the first?

       

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