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Forum Discussion
Duplicate Folder contents
hello,
I have a large amount of music, in folders by artist and subfolders by album, on an external hard drive that I would like to copy to my Dropbox.
Some of them are already on my Dropbox but ...
Здравко Thank you for your input! :slight_smile:
Anjistar Have you tried the features that can save your hard drive space? If not, please take the time to check them out: Selective Sync, Smart Sync.
I am suggesting the Dropbox desktop app because the website has limitations on uploads. Read about this here.
Finally, Allan G. I would like to add that dragging the existing files in the Dropbox folder, would take less time, than uploading online and manually deleting the files from your drive.
Note: :pushpin:
- You will not need to wait with your browser open for the syncing to complete.
- You can set up settings for the desktop app to sync faster.
- The local copies can be removed by our system automatically with syncing features. Please check Selective Sync and Smart Sync using the hyperlinks offered above.
Hope this is helpful everyone.
Keep in touch! :grin: Would love to get more feedback on this and provide a solution any other concerns.
Thank you!
Perhaps I did not phrase my last question well enough.
To put it another way, when you move a file or folder from one location to another in Windows file explorer, if there is a file/folder with the same name already there, you will get a pop up that asks you whether you want to replace the current file/folder (ie overwrite the contents),skip that particular transfer or compare the files to see if they are the same size, date etc.
Is it possible to have this happen in Dropbox?
At the moment it seems it just adds the file with a number in brackets after the name, or a selective sync conflict, which would mean trawling through all the files in the folder to see what was different. With over 500GB of music, that would take far too long, but I don't want to waste my dropbox space with duplicates.
Fiona
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHello Anjistar.
Dropbox allows you to add the same files in a folder if you wish. It will not reports a message to prevent you from uploading the same files online. If you are using Dropbox on your desktop, the Windows OS can do this for you, as you correctly mentioned.
If you want to check for duplications, please note that all the duplicates emmidiately get the (1) on their name. This way you can use the search bar and search for (1) to locate and delete any duplicates. :wink:
I hope this helps!
Thank you for the replies.
I can't use the desktop Dropbox as my laptop doesn't have enough space, so I have to do it online.
I guess I will have to upload the lot and then delete the duplicates.
Allan G, would you mind clarifying what you mean by 'this way', just out of interest?
Thank you
I meant uploading the files to dropbox website, rather than moving them in to the dropbox folder on a computer and letting the desktop client sync them with the server.
Hi Anjistar,
As far as I can follow current discussion, your problem comes, probably, from fact that you are using one big directory for everything. The idea of "Selective Sync" is to remove from local filesystem everything currently not in use, so local space 'relax'. The problem comes from fact that files your try to override are not locally located and you can't do this in a trivial way! That's where the conflicts come from. :wink:
Good practice will be change your work files organization. The files can be grouped in such a way one subfolder to contain everything you work on currently. This folder to be in sync locally, others could be removed (spare local space). So, as Fiona already mentions, Windows OS will have chance to take care for the rest. :wink: Good question here is: Why you keep two copies for files you work on? Give an answer to yourself, which can help the reorganization.
Hope this helps.
