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Forum Discussion
Mac slows down on starting with paid Dropbox.
I have to wait on my macs (27" and two 13" Macbook, three and four years old, newest systems) almost 10 to 15 Minutes until i can use other apps, as dropbox syncs so slow the list. After list is load...
I have an update to my original issue. Following one of the user suggestions, I upgraded my (mid-2010 "cheese grater") Mac to SSD storage. Between that and switching to "smart sync" and online storage (whatever it is called, when the files are downloaded only when you use them) my problem is mostly gone.
Obviously, this might not work for everyone. In this respect I concur that upgrading your hardware is not a "solution" in the sense you would expect from the support / troubleshooting discussion group for a software product. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of the lack of a software type solution.
It is likely that someone who can't afford $2-3k to buy a new computer or spend ~$500 on SSD's and memory upgrades, will be also unable to afford a paid Dropbox account. It probably makes sense financially to let those broke and / or stingy customers fend for themselves (especially the ones with several million files).
But you never know, some kid in Finland might just be working on a cloud storage system that also keeps track of the metadata of your files on every one of your computers so it doesn't have to rebuild the database or whatever each time the user logs in.
There is no solution other than upgrading your system to include an SSD drive that I can find. If you don’t like that than you can use Dropbox without the app.
Thank you Shaun S.10 for the info on upgrading the storage to SSD. As I mentioned, that solved the issue for me as well. Previously I had increased the memory to 64GB and that didn't make a lot of difference. Switching to online-only storage for most files also helped, but I think it was really the switch from HDD to SSD that did the trick.
This has been an issue for years with Dropbox. I guess they just have no idea how to fix it. I'm upgrading to SSDs on my 2012 MBP just to "reduce" the effect of this.
I have been suffering on both my Intel iMacs for years with the same issues. Takes about 15 to 20 minutes for my Mac to become usable while it waits for Dropbox to "startup" and then sync after.
Surprise, upgraded one machine to new M1 iMac and the process takes 30 seconds.
I wonder if anyone had to cahoones to delete dropbox and their dropbox folder, and then re-=download the entire filed and see if that fixed the issue?
