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Forum Discussion
Move some files from Dropbox to external drive, and then delete those files from my account
I have 140GB of files which I need to pass on to another designer via an external hard drive. How do I take everything off my Dropbox (I won't need them anymore) and put them onto an external drive f...
Hello Amanda,
I imagine you are syncing the files to your computer hard disc. You can copy the files/folders from your computer hard drive to the external hard drive. Dropbox folder is just like any other folder in your computer, whatever you save inside the Dropbox folder, it is replicated in the Dropbox cloud and any other connected devices. If you no longer required those files, you may delete those files from your computer, and it will be deleted from Dropbox cloud, so would not take up space anymore.
However, note that if it is a shared folder with others, the files will also be removed from their Dropbox account/devices. If you do not want that way, please get back to us. There are ways to unshare a folder, and remove the files only from your Dropbox account, but not from other members.
Simply cut and paste the files from your dropbox to the external hard drive.. this will add them all to the drive and remove them from DB at the same time :-)
how do you access the cut feature in dropbox? when right cliking a file the cut option is not there
- Lusil
Dropbox Staff
I too am using Dropbox with an external hard drive. However, I recently just purchased a laptop that requires me to disconnect the external drive from time to time. Will it have to sync every file each time I reconnect or is this current syncing, which it's doing with the new laptop, a one-time occurrence? And how can I avoid a total-sync with new computers in the future? Thanks.
- Hi, I have selective sync set up on my hard drive. I went and selected a folder, selected “copy”, went to my external drive and selected “paste”. Then I went back to my hard drive and deleted the folder. Now when I go to my external and try to open the files they are not actually there even though they look like they are. They are all incomplete files as they were online only. What a mess! Please advise.
- Lusil
Hey Derick Melander, thanks for nudging us on this thread.
Smart Sync helps reduce the amount of space your files take up on your hard drive by marking them as online-only. By doing so, only information about the file, such as the file name, location, and date the file was updated is downloaded. If you want to edit the file, you'll have to make it local again.
Having said that, I'd recommend restoring the file you deleted, letting it sync again to your Dropbox folder, setting it from online-only to local, and then copy-pasting it to another location outside of your Dropbox folder.
Let me know how it goes, thanks!
This does not work for me, on a mac desktop. Neither does drag and drop?
- Lusil
Getting back to the original question, I also want to put the files on an external harddrive in a way that makes them completely local and disassociates the files from Dropbox so they are no longer synced, and a person can use them locally without using Dropbox. However, I do NOT want to delete them from my Dropbox account, as I want a backup of the originals.
When I copy (not move) the files to my external hard drive as mentioned above (just using drag-and-drop in MS File Explorer) it still shows as linked to Dropbox. Does this mean they won't actually be available without Dropbox? Will the files be deleted in Dropbox, even though I copied them & did not move them from my Dropbox account?
