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Confused about what's taking up space in my 2 GB account
My Dropbox folder on my hard drive contains 1948 items totalling 266.9 MB. Why does Dropbox say I have 98.4% of 2.0 GB used? On the Dropbox website I can see a (Symlink Backup Copy) for eack of the...
Thanks again for your additional advice. That pointed me in the right direction.
I didn't have any selective un/sync files, but I decided to look inside the folders on the Dropbox website that were marked (Symlink Backup Copy). I don't have these on disk here. To my surprise, these were not just straight copies of my usual regular in-use folders/files, but had additional files and folders inside that I must have symlinked before that support ended in 2019. One of those (Symlink Backup Copy) folders was 1 GB itself. So I deleted, then permanently deleted, those (Symlink Backup Copy) folders after downloading them as ZIPs to be safe. So, thanks to your suggestion, my account now shows as 241.77 MB (or 11.8%) of 2 Gb used.
One final point, though, the pop-up confirm window that shows with the Permanently Delete button says something to the effect that permanently deleting files does not free up space. But it actually did in my case. (?)
So, if anyone else has diminishing space issues that they don't understand and if they were using Dropbox prior to 2019, check on the website for dormant (Symlink Backup Copy) folders that might be filled with some old unneeded content.
And with this I'll consider my issue resolved. Thanks again Rich and Walter!
Walter
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi Walter,
It says as follows:
Subscriptions
Dropbox Basic Free
Personal Dropbox space Using 2 GB of 2 GB
Regular files (2 GB)
Backup (0 bytes)
Shared files (0 bytes)
Unused space (32.4 MB)Thanks much for helping!
- Walter
I see, thanks for the additional information lmalma
Do you see any files or folders taking up that much space on the website if navigate your account's content?
When it comes to the desktop app, could it be that you selectively un-synced some folders from your computer? Could you have a look at the app's preferences under the sync tab to see if that's the case?
Thanks again for your additional advice. That pointed me in the right direction.
I didn't have any selective un/sync files, but I decided to look inside the folders on the Dropbox website that were marked (Symlink Backup Copy). I don't have these on disk here. To my surprise, these were not just straight copies of my usual regular in-use folders/files, but had additional files and folders inside that I must have symlinked before that support ended in 2019. One of those (Symlink Backup Copy) folders was 1 GB itself. So I deleted, then permanently deleted, those (Symlink Backup Copy) folders after downloading them as ZIPs to be safe. So, thanks to your suggestion, my account now shows as 241.77 MB (or 11.8%) of 2 Gb used.
One final point, though, the pop-up confirm window that shows with the Permanently Delete button says something to the effect that permanently deleting files does not free up space. But it actually did in my case. (?)
So, if anyone else has diminishing space issues that they don't understand and if they were using Dropbox prior to 2019, check on the website for dormant (Symlink Backup Copy) folders that might be filled with some old unneeded content.
And with this I'll consider my issue resolved. Thanks again Rich and Walter!
