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Forum Discussion
Taylor B.7
7 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Smart sync just started downloading everything to local
I have a folder with 8,000 large files. While I was working (but nowhere near the folder nor the files contained therein) I suddenly started getting notifications of "Smart Sync Download" and that al...
- 7 years agoIn cases where you see files downloaded from Dropbox to your computer that were previously online-only, and you didn’t open or change the files, this could be caused by another application. Some applications need to look at your files to work, and that makes Dropbox download the files.Please take a look at our article here for more details on why you are experiencing this issue.Let me know if this helps or if you have any further questions!
Norah
Dropbox Staff
As a starters, we need to double check what status icon do you see on your files. Online-only should be a cloud icon, or the green tick which means it’s synced locally.
Thanks in advance for your reply!
Taylor B.7
7 years agoExplorer | Level 4
I paused syncing while it was doing this because I did not have the space to locally sync all these files. As I was waiting for a response, I finished up my work day.
For a few minutes, I was getting "Smart Sync Download Failed" (not 100% sure of phrasing but that was the gist) messages as files failed to locally sync due to the paused status.
I shut down my computer for the night. When I rebooted just now, it is no longer paused, but simply says "up to date" (whereas yesterday it said something about syncing 8,000 files).
The folders were a mix - most were still gray, but the few subfolders containing files that had synced locally had the green tick. I updated the root folder to "cloud-only" and they are now all "online only" and file properties reveal that while the size is 169GB the "size on disk" is back down to where it would be expected for online only - 32mb.
I will respond if this strange behavior starts again. I am wondering if some sort of indexing happened in the background of Windows to trigger this. These were mostly video clips, so maybe some process akin to "let us helpfully identify all your media folders, no need to ask first, we'll just do it!" tricked dropbox into thinking the files were being opened and needed to be downloaded locally.
Hopefully this behavior will be hard to reproduce ;)
- Norah7 years agoDropbox StaffAs the issue has been resolved, the reasons on why you were experiencing this issue could be many, however, keep us updated if anything further comes up.Have a great week ahead!:slight_smile:
- Taylor B.77 years agoExplorer | Level 4
You say "the reasons on why you were experiencing this issue could be many" - just curious as to what some of those reasons might be?
- Norah7 years agoDropbox StaffIn cases where you see files downloaded from Dropbox to your computer that were previously online-only, and you didn’t open or change the files, this could be caused by another application. Some applications need to look at your files to work, and that makes Dropbox download the files.Please take a look at our article here for more details on why you are experiencing this issue.Let me know if this helps or if you have any further questions!
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