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Forum Discussion
Deleted files due to external drive getting disconnected
1. It looks like the external drive where I keep the local copies of my Dropbox files got disconnected. 2. This caused a number of files to get deleted from the Dropbox server and from all local cop...
Hi dragomirradev, unfortunately when working with your Dropbox folder on an external drive that's always a possibility.
We can’t guarantee perfect functionality of the Dropbox app if you’re running it on an external drive. For the Dropbox application to work properly, I’d recommend that you install it on the hard drive of your Operating System.
This is because Dropbox can’t always work correctly if the Dropbox folder becomes inaccessible, and this can happen if it's located on an external drive.
I'll forward your feedback to the appropriate areas so we can continue to improve.
The external hard drive is ok.
However, when it got accidentally disconnected from the power supply, this caused all files on the server to be deleted.
The question is how to prevent this from happening again. Can you add some safety measure in dropbox that would recognize that the entire local copy of the files has been disconnected and issue a warning to the user before automatically assuming that all these files need to be deleted.
Thanks.
Drago
Megan
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi dragomirradev, unfortunately when working with your Dropbox folder on an external drive that's always a possibility.
We can’t guarantee perfect functionality of the Dropbox app if you’re running it on an external drive. For the Dropbox application to work properly, I’d recommend that you install it on the hard drive of your Operating System.
This is because Dropbox can’t always work correctly if the Dropbox folder becomes inaccessible, and this can happen if it's located on an external drive.
I'll forward your feedback to the appropriate areas so we can continue to improve.
This is not a solution. This is a limit.
^^ Exactly this. This is far from solved.
- I agree - I still need Dropbox fixed properly - it is a not ideal workaround for a fundamental Dropbox flaw. I just added it in as an illustration of a temporary workaround. We happened to have the elements to be able to put this in place. It is not a real fix.
- I agree and I’d like to repeat that is for our data security that it’s important to have an offline physical copy.
This means that the full support for external drives is directly connected to data security and Dropbox should be aware of this and put a fix to something that from the user side seems to be very easy to fix.
