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nsbcmedia's avatar
nsbcmedia
Explorer | Level 4
7 years ago

Smart Sync Online Only Files still using disc space

I am using smart sync on multiple Macs, one running macos 10.12.6 and the other running macos 10.14, they both are showing my hard disks are almost full even though the majority of the files are set ...
Sync
  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    7 years ago
    On the Smart Sync page, it states the following:
     
    “On APFS, the operating system takes snapshots of the file system and available hard drive space. These snapshots may not update after you've used Smart Sync to set Dropbox files as online only. This means that hard drive space you freed up with Smart Sync may not be immediately reflected or available if this snapshot hasn't updated.
     
    “This hard drive space should eventually be freed up by the OS, but the amount of time this will take can vary. This isn't a behavior specific to Dropbox, but instead the designed behavior of macOS.”
     
    If Apple didn’t suggest this possibility to you, then I’m not sure what else I can say. 
     
    Users have reported these issues in the past, however the problems went away, presumably because the snapshots of the hard drive changed, which are essentially Time Machine snapshots.
     
    This issue occurred even on older versions of macOS, and yet the issues stopped after some time.
     
    I can only recommend checking with Apple again, given this information.
Jay's avatar
Jay
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
Hi there, as the ‘Get Info’ page confirms that Smart Sync is working as it should, you’ll need to contact Apple to see if they can correct this for you, as the Mac OS is itself reporting the incorrect amount, not Dropbox.
Pixelshot's avatar
Pixelshot
New member | Level 2
7 years ago

Same thing is happening to me.

I know the temptation is to pass the buck, but I don't think it's a Mac issue, or at least I'd like Dropbox to take this issue seriously. If it is indeed a mac issue, Dropbox should at least be able to provide a reason and a workaround since certainly many of your users use a Mac and this service is entirely based on this very thing working properly (file sizes reflected correctly). Seems that it is happening to other people as well, according to other threads I've read. In my case, the main Dropbox folder shows the full disk amount even though many files are marked as in the cloud.

 

Here's one folder that is marked as entirely in the cloud:

So, where is that 73 GB that should be free space on my hard drive and why does the main Dropbox folder think it's full size?

 

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