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Forum Discussion
Disaster: Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users :(
In case anyone's unaware... if you're a Mac user storing your Dropbox on an external drive, you'll shortly lose that ability. https://talk.tidbits.com/t/dropbox-drops-support-for-storing-files-on...
I'm really confused over this. If I've got most of files and folders current set for DROPBOX online only how is this going to affect me? Does it? I don't have the Dropbox app on an external. ie it reads users>Homefolder>Dropbox>xyzfolder. So, if this is the case, when does this issue affect me. I'm certainly not going to choose "Okay" or "start" until I know what's going on. I want to "downsize" my 2014 Mac Mini (1TB) to a 2023 Mac Mini2 (512gb), and planned on putting the videos in dropbox and pull them down to work on them; do I need to now just put them on an external instead? I basically use DROPBOX for storage so how does this change my situation? Any insight is appreciated.
On Friday, Dropbox posted this comment...looks like they are pausing the rollout until they implement a solution.
While Dropbox works on making external drive support official, as KzDbx kindly informed us about, I'd like to share an insight that was given to me by one of Dropbox Germany's support agents, Stephanie, who I asked for help with a concern I had regarding moving my Dropbox folder to an external drive, and not wanting to have to download all files again.
The solution she gave me seems to also be relevant to all those of us who already have all of our files on external storage and want to keep it that way...I re-wrote her instructions to hopefully be more clear:
• Quit the Dropbox client
• Download the newest client from http://dropbox.com/downloading
• When installing it, it may have the option "All Files Offline" greyed out (not enough disk space), so continue with "All files Online"
In the next step, choose "Advanced Options" and point the location of the Dropbox folder at your current location (the root of which your Dropbox folder resides in, not the Dropbox folder itself!)
• Dropbox will start and re-index all of your files, without downloading them again, which could take a while, depending on the number of files in your Dropbox
Once finished, your Dropbox folder will be on your external storage and, according to KzDbx, remain there until Dropbox finds an official solution.
Now stop threatening Dropbox with cancelling your subscriptions...they are obviously aware of how important this issue is, and can't afford to fall behind other cloud storage providers who are supporting external storage already!
Thanks KzDbx for letting us know, and please ask your overlords to do a better job communicating your progress to us foot-soldiers.I agree, this is an absolute disaster. I also raised this question with the Dropbox support today and they told me that even existing setups with external hard drives will be migrated to the internal drive by May 2023 at the latest. This will be a show stopper for our business.
We are considering setting up an emergency backup solution based on an old fashioned local file server. However, I have learned that Apple has also removed AFP support and now forces people to use Apple's extremely buggy SMB implementation, that causes many issues especially with Adobe software and messes up access privileges all the time.
What a mess. We are in 2023, have had a working cloud solution for years, and now, we are back in the 90's.
The known issue introduced in macOS 12.3 and regarding access to online-only files from 3rd party apps, is a disadvantage, but it can be eluded if you have a large external drive and make all the data needed available offline.
Really, I don't know what to say. This also goes to Apple who thinks it needs to lock down Macs just like their iPads. iPads can hardly be used for productive purposes because of the massive limitations in iPad OS. Now, it seems Apple tries to do the same to MacOS. These are no good prospects. Not at all.
I am very curious what solution dropbox will offer. With over 300+ TB data on dropbox, it's quite important feature for us.
"Now stop threatening Dropbox with cancelling your subscriptions..."
who are you to give us orders?
"they are obviously aware of how important this issue is, and can't afford to fall behind other cloud storage providers who are supporting external storage already!"
no they're not, and they've been falling behind on many things sadly (plans, now this)
hopefully you're a dropbox employee in disguise but either way your 'solution' doesn't feel very safe
I agree with you 100%. It kind of sounds like it is a dropbox employee in disguise. Sounds like the same kind of nonsense they tried to tell me when they also tried to explain away one of their woke managers preferring a particular color of people over white people. Racist like I couldn't believe.
I think this problem could seal their fait. I'm really tired of their problems. First I downgraded to the smallest dropbox I could. Then I canceled payment by the year.
If anybody else has a good provider that is secure, convenient, doesn't make us store things on our main drive, I'm all ears. I am on a Mac and really want things to be compatible with Mac and it's software. So Google Drive is a bit iffy still but I'm leaning in that direction.
Frankly, you are not in a position to tell anyone to stop "threatening" to cancel our accounts. That is the least we should be doing.
I for one did cancel my account at least from a yearly paid membership to the monthly paid. I will likely cancel that if there's any more of this nonsense here. They could've warned us. They should have already been proactively dealing with this.
This issue completely caught me off guard. I was already looking for another solution since I can't stand "woke" - and lo and behold came across this discussion while I was searching. Dropbox has crossed the line in this regard. I will likely still leave as soon as I can find a suitable replacement of which it appears that there are many. It's just difficult to take the time to go through them. But go through them I will.
It wasn't until a tremendous number of people "threatened" to cancel their membership that they finally responded. This is completely unacceptable. They should've been out in front of this. Way in front of this. But this is kind of typical Dropbox, isn't it?
So let me personally say it loud and clear… If this is not resolved and you don't stay in front of it and keep us informed, I for one will cancel my service 100%. I hope that's clear enough.
As to the person I am responding to here, thank you for the semi solution.As you were.
