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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...
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.
I am in the middle of migrating a client off a server and onto dropbox with over 18TB files and they're adamant it will be fine on external drive? Did anything change for you or is it all still working?
"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.
TheMainOne Similar to Cable. We just got our bill today. They have nicked me for another nickel and dime of $10 for this and $5 for that. Oh, and that adds $1 "just because you use us" tax. We're paying over $220 for the ABILITY to record on a dvr and another $400 a year for three DVRs! One only records two game shows nightly and a news program. I've fought, and argued, and gotten discounts, to watch fee creep for years. Then, in the last commercial block on every show I have to zip through the obnoxious, mansplaining a-hat go on about how wonderful Spectrum is. Done.
shinbeth
I should have put a " 😉 " after "now stop and"...I am sorry if it offended you, truly, but it wasn't meant as an order, but as a friendly suggestion...should have known that all humor has left this discussion a while ago....and no, I am not a Db employee...just trying to be of service and relaying to the community what worked for me...I just did the same thing on my Mac Mini M1 file server, and pointed Dropbox at my external 2TB SSD that holds the entirety of my Dropbox, and after indexing the folder, all is well...but you obviously see me as the enemy here, so take it or leave it and keep being angry.
We have 45TB uploaded to Dropbox and utilize our main DB folder on an external RAID volume in our 2019 Mac Pro (32TB Pegasus R4i) - this change will have drastic effects for our company.
As a precaution, we have opted to sync all files to online-only until a solution is developed.
(BTW: We recently uploaded 20TB to the DB cloud. Upload took 3 days. However, the online-only sync took about 3 weeks to process completely. So CAUTION to those trying to sync TB's of data "off" their drives via the Online-Only process.
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.
