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Forum Discussion
Folder upload fails on Dropbox.com
Hi, I just started with Dropbox Plus. I tried to upload large folders to Dropbox, which took quite a long time (sometimes about 2 days for some of the folders).
When the uploading was finished, I ...
There is. Theres a feature called Selective Sync. In the settings, you go to Sync tab, and go to Selective Sync. You select which folder that you WANT to see on your Hard Drive. The folders that is not picked, the Client will delete from Harddrive but will keep on the cloud. This sounds like what you want.
More info here: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/selective-sync-overview
Chris_J
Super User
Super UserHello Pascale2
While you wait on Fiona to answer, I thought I will also try to help. Can you do this for us? Go to a large file that you have stored in Dropbox that is supposed and selected for 'Online-only' and highlight the file and do a 'get info' on it? press command key + i and tell me how large the file. FYI, if it's truly online, you would see a thumbnail and it shouldn't be very large.
This should tell us whether it's working
Check out this Help Center article: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/smart-sync
Thanks for your quick reaction.
I get this for example for a Online-only file: "1,380,724,058 bytes (Zero bytes on disk)"
- Chris_J
Thanks for sharing that info. This tells me that the file has 0 bytes which don't add any data on your Hard drive so maybe perhaps, you were seeing something different?
If you look at the Help Center Article I linked to, it shows the badges that show on the files. Is it like this?
Yes, I do have such a cloud icon.
However I get this info:
which is not logical: the graphic shows my disk is almost full, whereas the info above says that half of my space is used.
Any idea why this is so? before I use Dropbox, the graphic was at half of the level of total storage.
thanks!
See my screenshot here:
- Chris_J
Okay, this was a topic years ago and its might have changed. Anytime, a person or even an app deletes the files from Dropbox, it saves the file in a hidden folder. They do this for easier restoration. The Client should delete the hidden cache after a couple of days.
If the files used to be on the Harddrive and you initialize smart sync to online, perhaps the files go into this hidden cache
I am going to check on where to find this hidden folder used for cache and post m findings
- Chris_J
According to this Help Center Article: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/desktop/cache-folder
you can delete the cache. Try deleting the cache folder as shown in the article and see if this changes anything
Thanks! looking forward to reading you!!
I cleaned the cached files, and it helped a bit.
However, it seems that my Dropbox files (approx. 172 MG - see screenshot) remain located on my local drive (181 GB of documents), because, appart of Dropbox I now have a very limited amount files on my local drive.
Is there a solution to prevent the dropbox cloud files to be stored loccaly????
- Chris_J
There is. Theres a feature called Selective Sync. In the settings, you go to Sync tab, and go to Selective Sync. You select which folder that you WANT to see on your Hard Drive. The folders that is not picked, the Client will delete from Harddrive but will keep on the cloud. This sounds like what you want.
More info here: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/selective-sync-overview
Thanks!!! That was it! Fine that you helped me out!!!
- Chris_J
I am very glad to help and also glad that you found what you were looking for
Have a good week
