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Forum Discussion
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...
Further exchange with Dropbox support:
Hello, welcome to Dropbox support. How can we help you?
>Hi there, I wanted to confirm something
>Hello there Jon, and thank you for contacting Dropbox support. My name is Jackson, and I will be more than happy to assist you with your issue, right away.
>Hi Jackson.I understand Dropbox going forward will no longer support storing the folder outside of the user directory. This means by default we can't store it on an external drive.
(OSX)
>A bunch of us are discussing this here https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Storage-Space/Disaster-Dropbox-removing-external-disk-support-for-Mac-users/m-p/659876#M10309
>That is true yes it will be under Library/Cloudstorage
>Someone on Reddit has suggested a workaround could be to move your Mac user directory (your home folder) onto an external drive. This would mean that ~/Library/Cloudstorage would be on the external drive.
Can you confirm if this would work?
>From my understanding, you would like to know if moving the whole user folder, would allow the Dropbox folder to be placed on the external drive.
>Correct.
>I am afraid I do not have definitive information about this workaround. The Dropbox folder, and the folders of other cloud services will have to be under that folder. If the folder is on the external drive, reasonably the Dropbox folder would also be located there
>OK so we'll just have to experiment. I have to say given this will mostly affect business users, the fact there's been little notification or suggestion of workarounds (only a note I happened to come across saying that our data would be moved without warning) isn't very professional.
(if you wanted to pass that back)
We shouldn't be having to experiment with hacks, when we use this as a serious tool.
>Ok! I will forward your suggestion to the team. The restriction is set by the macOS
>Thank you.
>And for us to give an official workaround, we have to be 100% sure that it will not cause issues
For instance
Having your Dropbox folder on the external drive is already risky
Since if it fails
There is a chance of file loss
>Perhaps the team could look into the workaround I'm suggesting and check it for ruggedness, and inform the community (e.g. on the link above)? There's a bunch of us paying thousands of pounds/dollars a year looking to jump ship to OneDrive (who have a workaround) or similar, and we REALLY don't want to.
>I will make sure to forward it to them. I know that Onedrive is using a workaround where they symlink the folder to that location
Instead of moving it there
>We use extended version history to mitigate for disconnected external drives btw. It's not practical to store the amount of data we handle on an internal SSD.
And I know lots of other users are the same
We're doing 4-8k video production
>Understood. I will forward your suggestion to them, since the team looks for user suggestions when implementing changes
Has anyone lost functionality yet? If so, have you attempted to move your Home User folder over to your external? I found a great article on how to move your Home User folder but haven't tried it yet: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/01/25/how-to-move-mac-user-folder-to-another-drive/
Since my business and clients are all on Dropbox, cancelling the service isn't possible. Buying a new Mac with at least 1 TB of storage seems a bit pricey to fix this issue.
I have been preaching the gospel of Dropbox for decades and now they do this to the faithful. Shame on them.
