You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.

Forum Discussion

ModelXTC's avatar
ModelXTC
Helpful | Level 6
5 years ago

Dropbox slow in download and upload

I've been using dropbox for a long time and I have always used it to sync my .pst outlook file between computers. The .pst file is 2.6GB and syncing the changes usually takes about 1 to 3 minutes.

However lately the sync has gotten extremely slow, starting at 3kb/s, stating it will take about 3 days to complete the job. Then after about 10 minutes the speed will eventually increase and the sync is finished quickly after that.

This problem now occurs on my Windows 10 laptop with a 350Mb connection and on my Windows 7 dekstop with a 120Mb connection.

Dropbox settings are all set to unlimited speed. No other files are being synced.

I normally wouldn't mind this sluggish syncing but I cannot close my laptop/desktop before the sync is done, either I will have to wait of leave the pc on.

What can I do to get the syncing speed back to normal?

  • After trying all the suggestions here and via email support I haven't been able to fix this issue. However today I decided to clean up the .pst file which has a 2.7GB filesize. After that I used the built in compress function from Microsoft Outlook. I stopped compressing the file just to check it's effect on the upload speed, it was reduced to 2.3GB already.

    My Dropbox upload speed is now at an instant 3000kb/s instead of the 3kb/s.

    Could it be there is some sort of filesize limitation?

    This solved my problem, I hope it will help somebody in the future.

  • Daphne's avatar
    Daphne
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Hey ModelXTC, thanks for reaching out to us here!

    Since you're seeing a slow speed initially, could you try temporarily disabling any antivirus or firewall installations to see if that helps at all?

    Let me know how it goes and we'll take it from there!

    • ModelXTC's avatar
      ModelXTC
      Helpful | Level 6

      I just now turned of the Windows Firewall completely. I have no other firewalls and I have no anti virus program active at this moment. The upload to dropbox is now between 1.5kb/s and 5kb/s whenever I check it. Occasionally it will spike to 30kb/s, which is still rather slow.

      The Dropbox speed used to be around 300kb/s or more.

      home_slow.png

      • Daphne's avatar
        Daphne
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

        Thanks for getting back to me ModelXTC!

        Could you just try resetting your Internet router to see if that helps at all? Sometimes resetting your connection gets you a different route which could improve speeds.

        Keep me posted on your findings!

  • Shaun Young's avatar
    Shaun Young
    Explorer | Level 4

    Hey my upload and download speeds have been extremely slow for a few months now never had this problem tried on multiple devices in my home and i get about 200-300kbps speeds never goes higher than 308kbps and no other website gives me this slow speed besides dropbox and i really need it for work im trying to download huge files and each time it fails after waiting multiple hours with these speeds i use it on chrome as i mentioned other devices gets the same speed so its not my pc is there anything i can do please help!

    • Daphne's avatar
      Daphne
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

      Hey Shaun Young, I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble with this!

       

      Can you check out the info in this thread here and let me know if any of the suggestions help with this.

       

      Hope this helps!