You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Status:
Delivered
Can we have more folder options like custom folders or sub-folders to add to Computer Backup?
Right now, the automated backup option in Dropbox allows me to sync my Documents, Desktop and Downloads folders. By far the biggest - and most important - folder on my computer is the Music folder th...
Under the "Backup" option in the dropbox app for Windows, currently theres an option to back up certain folders, such as Desktop, Music ... and so on.
I want an option to add custom folder to back up.
Reason. My setup is
At D:\Data I have my personal folders and files
At D:\Dropbox\Data I have my personal folders and files, that is beeing sync. to my Dropbox online
I want this option under 'Backup' to be "Add custom folders" so I can backup D:\Data to D:\Dropbox\Data
Please allow us to choose any number of multiple folders on our computers. I would love to back up a folder on my one drive, another folder on my external drive, and you can see where this is going.
I sadly cancelled our business account which we were going to include for the entire group, because of this feature.
Dropbox is loosing market share to companies like one drive and google that can currently do this.
I really love dropbox and their values, and I'm sure dropbox engineers get a million feature updates/requests/bugs everyday but this one feature is actually affecting Dropbox's bottom line.
Limiting file back ups toDesktop, Documents and Downloads is dumb and make the entire point of the back up feature useless.
Many computers have more than one internal drive. I have such a computer. My C drive is where the OS (Win10) and all programs are loaded, however this drive is only 500GB. I use my D (also internal) for Documents and working space. This drive is 2TB, I also have an E drive, also internal, that I keep pictures and music on. It is 4TB.
I wanted to use Dropbox Backup for the backup of all my data. Dropbox by default loads onto the C drive. It is not uncommon for the SYNC'd data to exceed the size of the C drive. So I have moved my SYNC preference to my E drive and all seems to be OK.
Because of internet speed and size of data I want to keep the smart sync set to local. I have a travel laptop that has a 500gb size so I keep Dropbox SYNC onto C drive and web default set to On-Line. This allows me to access documents and data on my home PC's D and E drives while on the road without filling up the travel laptop C drive.
On my Home PC I want to use Backups to backup Documents and Downloads (my D drive) and Music and Pictures and Videos (my E drive) but the Backup routine wants to have these folders located on the C drive (which is an obvious issue due to size limits). However the backup routine will not "look" across different drives; therefore, Dropbox Backup is of no use (in my circumstance)
It would be most helpful to allow Dropbox Backup preference to look across different internal drives and Backup this data.
RFWalker3
Dropbox user since 2008
This sounds like a great idea!
Sounds like a great idea!
Yup! Just asked support for how to do this and found out it wasn't an option. Hopefully it's relayed to the engineering department asap!
I, too, would love this feature.
I've voted for this.
I think that not having the ability to add custom folders to the backup feature is limiting. I have multiple disk drives with important files spread across them. The only way I can back these up is by doing my own local backup of these locations to a single drive, and it's that drive/subfolders that I have to then backup again to a remote location. I do this with the general sync functionality, but it goes against the way my mind works to do it this way - feels like a messy workaround, and takes up twice the amount of local storage 😄
It would make the automatic back-up feature on your Dropbox Desktop app (I'm using mac) more convenient if you could provide more options for browsing folders.
Further explanation:
As an example of how difficult it is without browsing, I've been trying to back up an external drive, but because it contains my Dropbox folder, it's impossible to "introduce" this drive to the Dropbox.app using the method of ejecting and reconnecting it (the Dropbox.app can't be running at the same time).
Needless to say, I intended to select the other folders on the drive (not the Dropbox folder itself) for backing up.
I tried to migrate the Dropbox folder to another location (another drive) and could start the backup, but lost sight of what's happening in the Dropbox cloud and now my Dropbox.app doesn't show any response when I disconnect and reconnect.
It would solve everything if, in the Preferences - Backups window of Dropbox.app, the "Set up" button would offer browsing options.
To the dropbox team:
Please reconsider the "Not for right now" Status. If you only knew how helpful it would be to have an option for custom folders to automatic backup. I'm thinking of external disk drives with important folders, like Mikeos2001 in the last comment.
