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Forum Discussion
Dropbox Files Take Up Hard Drive Space
My laptop keeps showing me that my Dropbox files are taking up space on my hard drive. I am certain they are syncing and on the cloud. How do I resolve this? Thanks.
Thanks for taking the time to post here, Roni5050.
Just wanted to let you know that the Dropbox desktop app's job is to sync local versions of your files to your computer.
This allows you to access your Dropbox files and work on them, even if you're not connected to the internet and it's our preferred method of uploading/downloading larger files.
You can of course still use the website and if you'd like, you can also use our selective sync feature, which will help you remove entire folders from your Dropbox folder, but keep them on dropbox.com, to free up some of your space.
I hope this helps!
Are you using the free version of Dropbox, or a paid version? It looks like the free version uses hard drive space now, and only paid dropbox uses cloud storage
- Lusil
Dropbox Staff
This is what I don't understand about smart sync though - I'm a photographer and have a ton of RAW files and large jpg files from editing in Lightroom and Photoshop. I save all my filed to my Professional Dropbox account because I've had multiple failed external hard drives and computers. I use the smart sync function and it simply doesn't matter. I'm running critically low on computer space every single day. What is the deal with this? It's driving me nuts that I can't figure it out.
I have this problem as well. I have already set everything to online-only through smart sync. It doesn't matter - the laptop that I use which I need to access my dropox with still screams that it's out of space, and that huge files in my dropbox are the problem. I have looked everywhere and found no more options to set, no more menus to pull down... no matter what I do, DB is still claiming local HD space.
Please help.
- Walter
Hey gwilcken, sorry to hear you're having issues this.
If you've made sure that the app is 'up to date' and not still syncing in your computer's system tray/menu bar, then, the space might be taken up by the cache folder.
Could that be the case here?
Keep me posted!
Is there a difference between files that have only "place holders" in Selective Sync and can be downloaded to the computer and files that are On-line only in Smart Sync?
- Jay
Hi Photon_wrangler, with selective sync, there are no placeholders, the files literally do no exist on your machine, and will only appear on the site.
Only Smart Sync with online-only files have placeholders on your machine.
- I use a paid version.
- Rich
Super User II
Free or Paid doesn't matter. By default, the Dropbox folder on your computer is ON your computer and takes up local drive space. The primary purpose of Dropbox is to sync files between your computer and your account online, along with other devices linked to your account. Dropbox is, by default, not a cloud-based folder or drive where your files only exist in the cloud.
Using Selective Sync (available to all accounts) or Smart Sync (available on Professional and Business accounts) you can remove the local copies of folders and files. See Lusil's reply above for links to the appropriate help articles for more information.
I find myself Googling how to do this every few years, why don't they make these things easier to use? I have a very slow pc jammed up with files that I thought were in the cloud. Same for Google Drive. A complete waste of time. All help articles seem out of date and I get lost trying to simply un-sync the friggen folders on my hard drive!
