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Forum Discussion

Brain Toomer's avatar
Brain Toomer
Helpful | Level 5
2 years ago

dropbox taking up local hard drive space

OK I installed dropbox for desktop and during set up selected the option to store its contents online only, not locally. Then I moved a 392GB folder from local hard drive to dropbox in order to have that space to use for other things locally, thinking I was moving it from the local drive to dropbox online. But that 392GB is still occupying space in a dropbox folder on the local drive. So what effect did it have when I selected to STORE ONLINE ONLY? How do I get that data off the local drive and have it fully populated to the online dropbox? I have 2TB of dropbox storage online, what's the point if it's going to continue using up space on my local drive? That was the whole purpose of having dropbox, to free up local drive space. HELP!!

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

    Hi Brain Toomer, thanks for messaging the Community!

     

    Files that are directly moved into the Dropbox folder from elsewhere on your computer remain local until you decide otherwise.

     

    Once the files are fully synced, you can mark those files and folders as online-only.

     

    If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.

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