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Forum Discussion
Time machine forces smart sync to download files locally!
There is a huge problem when using smart sync as a Mac user who has time machine setup to automatically back up the entire hard drive (including the dropbox folder). If this is the case the time mach...
- The files aren't on the computer so your backup software can't back them up. If it tries to access the files, Dropbox is likely bringing them local just like it's supposed to do (no different from when you access a file that's Online Only; it's downloaded). Dropbox likely can't differentiate between you accessing a file or another application accessing the file.
Your best bet would be to add an exclusion to your backup set so that it doesn't attempt to backup any files that are marked as Online Only.
Rich
Super User II
Super User IIThe files aren't on the computer so your backup software can't back them up. If it tries to access the files, Dropbox is likely bringing them local just like it's supposed to do (no different from when you access a file that's Online Only; it's downloaded). Dropbox likely can't differentiate between you accessing a file or another application accessing the file.
Your best bet would be to add an exclusion to your backup set so that it doesn't attempt to backup any files that are marked as Online Only.
Your best bet would be to add an exclusion to your backup set so that it doesn't attempt to backup any files that are marked as Online Only.
Hi guys, thanks for taking the time to reply to this. I completely get as to why this is how dropbox behaves at present, i.e. that the time machine request triggers the download of the file. However, I wonder whether there is a way to prevent dropbox from doing so if it is a 'read trigger' by time machine?
What I really would like to continue doing is to be able to backup my dropbox folder to my time machine automatically as this gave me extra peace of mind that I physically have a copy of my important files. It was good enough for me to have this physical copy only of the files that are physically on my hard disk, i.e. I used selective sync.
Having smart sync is however a great new feature for me as I have a ton of files on my dropbox that I do not need regularly but which I really love being able to find via spotlight etc.
So it looks like I'm between a rock and a hard place and for now need to exclude my dropbox folder from time machine and run a scripted backup from time to time from the command line to an extrenal drive using rclone. Given I'm using a laptop this is far less comfortable than using time machine over Wifi and I might of course forget to do the manual backup quite frequently.
- Jane
Dropbox Staff
I ran into this problem as well and I think I have a pretty good workaround. I use Forklift to backup folders via synching. If you use Forklift and synch your DB folder to an external, the first time it will local synch anything that is online only, but once it has been synched once you can then go back to the DB folder and turn everything back to online-only. New files and changes will get copied over when you run Forklift again, but not the online only stuff remains untouched. Seems to be working perfectly for me.
I switched to Carbon Copy Cloner when I ran into this problom upon upgrading to Dropbox Pro. I do like to have a local backup of my dropbox folder and am content to have it only contain the files that are currently local in my DB folder. Carbon Copy Cloner seem to not have a problem with this.
