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

mlhanke's avatar
mlhanke
Explorer | Level 4
5 months ago

How can I put the Dropbox on my external hard drive and remove it from my PC hard drive?

I am running out of space on my hard drive that is on my PC. I have a large external hard drive that I would like to put Dropbox on in order to free up the space on my PC hard drive. How do I do that?


  • mlhanke wrote:
    I have a large external hard drive that I would like to put Dropbox on in order to free up the space on my PC hard drive. How do I do that?

    While that's certainly possible on a PC (no longer possible on a Mac), you should understand the risks involved as it's highly NOT RECOMMENDED.

     

    If the external drive becomes disconnected while Dropbox is running, Dropbox could see the sudden loss of the Dropbox folder as a mass deletion, at which point it would sync that deletion to your account online.

     

    You would be much better off buying a larger internal drive (even as a secondary drive if your computer has the room) and storing the Dropbox folder there.

     

  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II

    mlhanke wrote:
    I have a large external hard drive that I would like to put Dropbox on in order to free up the space on my PC hard drive. How do I do that?

    While that's certainly possible on a PC (no longer possible on a Mac), you should understand the risks involved as it's highly NOT RECOMMENDED.

     

    If the external drive becomes disconnected while Dropbox is running, Dropbox could see the sudden loss of the Dropbox folder as a mass deletion, at which point it would sync that deletion to your account online.

     

    You would be much better off buying a larger internal drive (even as a secondary drive if your computer has the room) and storing the Dropbox folder there.

     

  • The Mac's avatar
    The Mac
    New member | Level 2
    Consider moving other large files to your external drive. You can also create a duplicate folder for Dropbox files then save/sync the duplicate to the external drive.
    • mlhanke's avatar
      mlhanke
      Explorer | Level 4

      Thanks, Programs and Dropbox is all I have on the PC drice, so, I am already doing the sync to the external, just low on the Internal. Guess I will have to get a larger one.