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Forum Discussion

Jon C.10's avatar
Jon C.10
Collaborator | Level 8
2 years ago

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...
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  • BenDBX's avatar
    BenDBX
    4 months ago
    Hi 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!
Jon C.10's avatar
Jon C.10
Collaborator | Level 8

ommphoto you're welcome.  I emailed Appleinsider, 9to5mac and macrumors to try and get some heat under it.  As of typing the first 2 have run the story.

Your understanding matches mine - at some random point when we restart the app, we'll be forced to switch to the internal drive.

Two workarounds have presented themselves so far:

1. Move your user folder itself onto the external drive so ~/Library/CloudStorage is by definition on the external drive.   Only a good idea if the external is a fast SSD, and fiddly with permissions by all accounts.


2. Edit /etc/fstab to make the external drive mount at ~/Library/CloudStorage.   This is apparently supported by unix operating systems, although a bit over my head.   I saw someone on Appleinsider got it working (see pic). We're going to test this as it is potentially the least disruptive route.   Will it work properly though?  Hard to say.




We really could use comment from dropbox on this..

Gib Henry's avatar
Gib Henry
New member | Level 2
2 years ago

> …I emailed Appleinsider, 9to5mac and macrumors to try and get some heat under it.  As of typing the first 2 have run the story.…

 

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