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Ashvin B.'s avatar
Ashvin B.
New member | Level 2
10 years ago
Status:
Closed

Sync dropbox across multiple locations/hard drives

I have a larger dropbox account than my primary hard drive. It would be great if dropbox could support virtual links to files outside of it's default location, without those files having to also be in the main dropbox folder. I am aware of shortcuts/aliases on windows/OSX, but those don't solve the problem if my primary drive has limited space.

This is one workaround, but native support through the Dropbox client would be ideal: http://bobmckay.com/software/split-dropbox-across-multiple-drives

  • Nancy's avatar
    Nancy
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    Status changed:
    Accepted
    to
    Not for right now

    Thank you for sharing your idea.

     

    We have looked into this, but it is not something we are actively working on at this time.

     

    We regularly review these ideas, and we will keep you updated if this idea moves forward in the future.

  • oyvine's avatar
    oyvine
    New member | Level 2

    Hi,

    I have read the entire thread about this now. It is good to see that I am not alone with this want/need. I have about 650GB of photos in my dropbox. So far I have been using selective sync to work with this. This is all fine until I want to tidy up some old non-synced folder or quickly find old photos of my daughter for a celebration for instance. My solution at the moment is to have the entire dropbox synced to an old linux machine and mount that folder as a Samba drive. This works but access is sloow. I then got the idea to sync everything to a fast external USB drive and work with this (the feature requested in this thread). This way I can plug in the external drive when I need to access everything and use the laptop SSD for just the recent files. After seeing how Dropbox drags their feet with this feature request I think I am left with three options:

    1. Buy a mac with a really large SSD (2TB for room to grow)

    2. Buy the fastest NAS I can get, install dropbox sync on this box and use wired ethernet to the NAS (I wonder how much faster this will be than my current solution?).

    3. Forget about dropbox and move over to pCloud. Then I can sync all files to a fast USB drive(?) 

    4. Wait for Dropbox to understand that this is needed

     

    I will now check out pCloud and see how they compare. I have been paying for Dropbox since 2016 and I am currently on the 2TB plan. I will probably decide if I should switch or not before Dropbox resolves this problem.

  • cmj01's avatar
    cmj01
    Explorer | Level 4

    I gave up on this a long time ago. 

    I now use idrive e2 and synchbak pro to manage things. Works great for photos and videos. Using OneDrive for files and other documents. 

    Dropbox lost their way unfortunately. 

  • David_Learner's avatar
    David_Learner
    Explorer | Level 3

    cmj01 hi,

    Thanks for your feedback,

    Yes, I also had to give up on this 2 years ago, and like you, use iDrive for backup and OneDrive for all cloud usage (photos and files).

    Pity about Dropbox, I loved using it, but such a stupid limitation is unforgivable.

  • randwmedia's avatar
    randwmedia
    New member | Level 2

    At the moment Dropbox can only sync on one hard drive. But I work with videos so I have multiple drives on my PC, including external hard drives I need to copy. It would be ideal if Dropbox could sync to multiple hard drives besides just the one default one. 

  • Zach Hiebert's avatar
    Zach Hiebert
    Explorer | Level 3
    Dropbox desktop is an excellent app as it allows me to automatically back my files up to the cloud as a videographer. This means a lot to me because my file structures are constantly changing such as auto saves and bringing in new footage into a project folder. This would be very tedious to back up manually. This is why I use the dropbox desktop app for my internal Drive on my laptop. However I would love to have the dropbox desktop app for my external hard drive as well as when I’m done with projects I like to put them away so they don’t take up space on my laptop internal hard drive. I understand that if I’m done with a project on my internal laptop drive on the dropbox desktop app I can just make it so it’s available online only. The problem with this is that if I need to access an old project to bring it up for something again like a show real or a social media post I have to re-download everything and this is tedious. This is why I want to have an external drive to back everything up but I still want to back up to Dropbox, because having it on the cloud is the safest way to ensure against drive failure. This brings me to my main issue. I understand that in the dropbox desktop app, I am able to change the location of it so I could change it to my external drive, but if I did that, then it would no longer be on my internal drive as well. And I like to edit current projects on my internal laptop, and back up projects on my external drive. The dropbox desktop app does not currently allow it being located in Two different drives at once. I personally think this would be an innovative game changer for people working with back up projects to have an option to have the dropbox desktop app be available for two different locations. I’m not sure how you would work out making sure they are distinct from each other but perhaps you could develop a system where it says dropbox one and dropbox two. But the reason why this is so important is instead of using Dropbox to back up my external hard drive. I’m forced to go to another service like Google Drive for my external hard drive, and keep Dropbox on my internal drive because you guys don’t provide me the options for both. So I think it would help Dropbox standout from other cloud services if they provided this.
  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    Status changed:
    Not for right now
    to
    Closed
    This idea has been closed as it has reached the end of the Share an Idea process.
     
    Thank you for your suggestion, and if you have another idea to share, please do!