You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.

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.
Cadam's avatar
Cadam
Helpful | Level 5

HI there. I am having the same issue. All my dropbox files are Online Only but dropbox gave me a warning today that my hardrive is full - and so it is! Using Smart Sync and MacOS 10.13.6. Help!

 

All smart sync online onlysays documents is 1.34 TB on my hard drive. NOt sure how that can really be as I only have a 500GB storage harddrive

ridgeway's avatar
ridgeway
Explorer | Level 4
6 years ago

Having same issue across windows and various versions of macOS. I'm the admin for our business account which is near the 3TB limit... and smart sync worked, while oddly in beta. Now it's not syncing properly on my account even when setting to online only and letting it reindex (which is a pain itself). Files will be completely missing on another device that should be syncing. 

Further, the Dropbox admin panel won't even load the 'recently deleted' files button. I am losing a little faith in the reliability of this - previously awesome as it's cross platform - team file collab suite. I mean we literally just ditched the on-prem file server which was a pain in itself... and here I am with all these sync issues. I tried supprt and reverting to non-beta; no luck, and now I'm back on beta hoping that the fix gets pushed there first (no other team members on beta that I know about).

I mean what's goin on here it's a mess:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sxhjs9lcveb85o6/Screen%20Shot%202018-11-27%20at%202.21.39%20PM.png?dl=0 

and

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sxhjs9lcveb85o6/Screen%20Shot%202018-11-27%20at%202.21.39%20PM.png?dl=0 

 

Been progressively getting worse the past 2 months, there needs to be a resolution to this - I currently refer Dropbox business to businesses instead of on-prem servers but I'm getting wary. 

Thanks in advance. 

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    6 years ago
    Have you contacted Apple already about the OS not being able to recognize the correct file sizes? Regarding the deleted files page, could you try switching browsers to see if this helps? Otherwise, use incognito/private browsing mode without any extensions running, clearing your cache and even resetting your browser entirely. Let me know how it goes!
    • ridgeway's avatar
      ridgeway
      Explorer | Level 4
      6 years ago

      If you're speaking to me, I have reached out, instructed me they couldn't help since I previously activated beta features - and to completely reinstall (wiped full reinstall as I've tried all of the above) on every device. Yes, I opted in for beta so I understand but opting back out and it being retroactive is kind of lame. Just hope this gets resolved soon. When I sync a new device I try to minimize even online-only files via selective sync, but even then it's happening just like the screencaps (very similar look on Windows 10 Pro latest build, and another macOS Sierra - not just Mojave). I do have nearly 125,000,000 files as it warns before doing selective sync (that anything greater than 500,000 will 'take a very long time to sync'). 

      I did recently do a test on a fresh Windows 10 build which is very fast/brand new system designed for heavy CAD based workloads, and it took almost 24 hours just to index taking up quite a bit of resources given it was built to handle high IO and CPU usage - and that's also with a fiber connection and no other hardware bottlenecks that I'd be aware of aka 1Tb 970 M.2 with 16 core processor, more than enough RAM, etc. I'm going to start taking more detailed logs because I think it may be something to do with individual file/folder permissions as I've gotten some errors moving/deleting files regarding permissions (locally, not Dropbox - again I'm the main admin on our team).

      Thanks in advance!

      • Jay's avatar
        Jay
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
        6 years ago
        Are you referring to beta features on a Mac, like for a new version of Mojave? If so, this could also be a factor since the OS isn’t currently a fully tested or supported environment for the Dropbox desktop application.
         
        Regardless, you have that many files, then it can take a bit of time for time for the files to index and sync down to your device, and the performance decreases as it needs to keep tabs on all those potential syncing files.
         
        Let me know what you find out with the other issues you think could be the cause.

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!