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Forum Discussion
Jon C.10
2 years agoCollaborator | Level 8
Disaster: Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users :(
In case anyone's unaware... if you're a Mac user storing your Dropbox on an external drive, you'll shortly lose that ability. https://talk.tidbits.com/t/dropbox-drops-support-for-storing-files-on...
- 4 months agoHi Everybody,We’re excited to share that external drive support for Dropbox for macOS on File Provider is now available for testing as a beta feature. This is available to some users today and will be available to additional users on a rolling basis. In order to be eligible to test this feature, please follow the instructions in this Help Center article.Keep in mind that participation in beta programs is subject to the certain terms and conditions. There are certain additional participation requirements:
- This beta is only available to US-based users
- You must be on macOS 15 beta
- You must have an external drive that is APFS formatted and encrypted
Please let me know if you have any further questions!
Businessman994
2 years agoHelpful | Level 5
This is a disaster for our my small business. We have 5 Mac Mini's with tiny 250gb hard drives, which run Dropbox on external SSDs (formatted to the AFPS system). I literally setup a new Mac Mini this weekend this way.
Now I am reading that Dropbox just won't work on them at all? So Dropbox has to use what little space is available in the 250gb internal drives??
If this is true...we will have no choice but to leave Dropbox and migrate to something else.
- Jon C.102 years agoCollaborator | Level 8We are in the same boat. We pay Dropbox thousands a year, I’ve just been talking to support about getting a partial refund when we cancel our account once we work out wth to replace it with :-/. Disaster is right.
- Businessman9942 years agoHelpful | Level 5
Has this change already happened? I just checked one of our Mac Minis and the Dropbox folder is still on the external SSD.
- Jon C.102 years agoCollaborator | Level 8If you read my exchange with db tech support they say it’ll happen when Dropbox is next automatically updated which happens on system restart.
- davidgaw2 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Unfortunately, it sounds like the change is being driven by Apple itself, not by Dropbox, which may mean that all alternative services face a similar limitation. If you continue to use Macs running Ventura or later, you may need to find another way to work or acquire machines with more internal storage (which a cynic might suspect as a reason for Apple to make the change).
- studioj232 years agoHelpful | Level 5
So for older systems on older OS's this will or will not happen? ie my main rig is on Catalina and I wasn't planning on upgrading it anytime soon. Will I need to find another solution for our 20TB dropbox?? holy moly this is a disaster.
- Apothekerry2 years agoNew member | Level 2
This is bad bad news, and may make Dropbox unusable for me, as well.
Anyone have any thoughts about sticking an alias in that new required location, that points to an external drive?
- Jon C.102 years agoCollaborator | Level 8One drive appear to have made a workaround. Major shame db haven’t. 😕
- jomarie7772 years agoNew member | Level 2
Could you kindly provide a link with information on how to make One Drive work as an alternative? Would love to find an alternative service but unable to find anything as of yet
- rimat2 years agoNew member | Level 2
David, Of course Dropbox could support external drives as they did before today OR other cloud storage solutions continue to do (sync.com, icedrive, pCloud). Lets be clear that this is a design choice by Dropbox.
- Jon C.102 years agoCollaborator | Level 8
"Lets be clear that this is a design choice by Dropbox."
I'm not so sure. This previous thread about this (which someone sent me earlier today) implies Apple is slowly forcing all the streaming companies to do this - OneDrive already made the change a year back, and now has a workaround.
Looks like an Apple thing not a Dropbox thing. (Note the mention of Ventura is a red-herring, this affects Monterey too).
- jahshwa2 years agoHelpful | Level 6
Do you know of an alternative service that will allow it? I thought it was Apple's fault, so i'm wondering if we just have to all move to Windows. Yuck.
- ArthurPix2 years agoCollaborator | Level 10
jahshwa I’ve posted about this previously, but I am now using a service called Sync.com, which is not perfect, but terrific for my needs. It’s based in Canada and committed to supporting users with external drives. One other user found their service too slow for his very heavy needs, but I’m very comfortable with them, YMMV, but you may want to give Sync.com a shot.
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