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

I actually started with Apple support after reading the responses to other posts on here. Their response, which I tend to agree with, is that if its happening on mulitple machines running mulitple versions of OSX then it would be a Dropbox issue and not an Apple OS issue. I have tried some reinstalls and rebuilt the spotlight indexes and the issue remained.

  • Pixelshot's avatar
    Pixelshot
    New member | Level 2
    7 years ago

    I also tried emptying cache as suggested by a Dropbox web page. No change. It's been this way for several weeks.

    • Jay's avatar
      Jay
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
      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.
      • Pixelshot's avatar
        Pixelshot
        New member | Level 2
        7 years ago

        This issue has been there since my first use of this feature (it has never worked). That means that it has been incorrect for several months (at least since July). Please help me figure out WHY it's happening (even if it is eventually on Apple's side, which is definitely debatable), because we know what will happen: Apple will pass the buck right back and we'd be right where we started.  Perhaps someone at Dropbox should have a talk with Apple to determine what is happening? Thank you.

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