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Forum Discussion
move contents of dropbox to external hard drive
how do I move contents of dropbox
i.e my files and photos to an external hard drive
thanks folks
- Do you have the Dropbox client installed on your computer? If so, then your files will be syncing to your computer. They'll be in the Dropbox folder. Just copy them to your external drive like you would any other file.
If you're not already syncing your files and you just use the Dropbox website, then you'll need to download your files and save them to your external drive. The easier method would be to install the Dropbox client, let it sync all of your files to your computer, uninstall the client, and then move the Dropbox folder to your external drive. - [mod edit 2023, updated Help Center link]
not synchronised as such , copied I meant - to another storage facility such as a external hard? I'm a newbie so not very techie
thanks
thanks
Sanchez
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox Staff- No, I want to move Dropbox to an external drive off my very crowded hard drive, and I bought a 5T drive to do that. It is on the Dropbox cloud, so I don't need it on two drives at my house. ;)
I would like to know how to keep dropbox on my laptop and have a copy on an external hard drive just incase something happens. I do not want to lose my designs. I want them saved permanently on my own external drive. Thank you for your help!
- Sanchez
Hello Dropboxers @sanchez, @jayne.
Like many many other Dropbox users, I use SMARTSYNC to keep my hard drive from filling up. Nevertheless, I want to back up all my files, including those that reside ONLY in the Dropbox cloud (due to SMARTSYNC) to an external hard drive. This is best practice for data safety: true backup safety requires that my files in the Dropbox cloud, that are NOT on my computer hard drive, must be backed up on separate medium. In my case, I want them to be backed up to an external hard drive.
The question is how to do this: how can I back up all the contents of my cloud Dropbox (including those files that are Smartsynced and therefore are not present on my computer hard drive) to an external hard drive.
Please do not tell me that Dropbox has great servers and I should not worry. Please do not tell me to change the location of my Dropbox to the external drive, as that is an unworkable solution, it´s not something one can or should do periodically, and it may screw up all my SMARTSYNC settings on my computers internal hard drive. Please give me, and the rest of the community, a straight answer on how this can be done.
I also wish to note that simply going on the browser version of Dropbox and downloading everything is a terrible solution: sometimes Dropbox tells you that you're trying to download too much, sometimes it just freezes, and I'd have to select manually each and every folder to back up, every time I need to do so. Since I have about 2 TB worth of data on the Dropbox cloud, this is unwieldy.
I have to say, I am on the verge of dropping my Dropbox Professional account, switching to the free one, and moving everything somewhere else since Dropbox seems to be purposefully preventing users from effectively backing up their data to an external hard drive, for reasons I cannot fathom.
