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Forum Discussion

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.
Sebhue18's avatar
Sebhue18
New member | Level 2
7 years ago

I'm experiencing the same problem with my business account and it is affecting every member of my team. Each uses selective sync and each shows that their hard drives are full when you look at "About this Mac." 

Has anyone found a workaround? After reading through this thread, it looks like the Dropbox team has not proposed solutions, but perhaps I've missed some key piece of data. 

 


Thanks!

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    7 years ago
    Hi Sebhue18, if you’re only using selective sync, and not Smart Sync, could you check that the folders unchecked in the window are not present on the machine?
     
    When unchecking a folder, it should delete them from the machine, but sometimes it doesn’t, so you’ll need to delete them yourself. 
     
    These folders can be identified with a grey minus symbol on them, like so:
     
      
    Prior to deleting them, make sure that the users haven’t been updating files in those folders, since they aren’t synced to the site, and will be deleted.
    • Sebhue18's avatar
      Sebhue18
      New member | Level 2
      7 years ago

      @jay

      We're using SmartSync, not SelectiveSync. 

      • Jay's avatar
        Jay
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
        7 years ago
        Okay, was just checking because your forum post specifically mentioned selective sync, which is a different feature.
         
        If you’re using Smart Sync, and the ‘Get info’ page is showing the ‘size on disk’ to be minimal, then it is working as expected, and the Mac simply cannot process the difference in the size of the files.
         
        I’d recommend contacting Apple for further support on how to get the OS to recognize the correct size as it appears on the disk itself.

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