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Forum Discussion
Dropbox not recognizing external drive or showing sync icons
Hi Everyone,
I signed up for a 30 day Dropbox Plus trial. I already had Dropbox Desktop App (version 207.4.5821) installed on my Win Acer Nitro laptop on the C: drive with a Dropbox folder sync...
Here is some additional information. I can still see the SSD icon under the Backup tab as below:
When I click on the SSD, it opens up the Manage Backups box, which looks like the image above which does not have the SSD shown, so I can't manage it.
At the bottom it is showing that there is still updating going on. This updating can only relate to the SSD backup because under "Activity" it shows that all files in the Dropbox folder have already been synced. So it appears there is a mismatch between the updating and the status above that the backup has been completed.
I have tried Quiting from the Dropbox App and restarting it, but this does not fix the sync icon issue (as Dropbox help says it should), nor fix the SSD missing issue.
A further update.
I tried another reboot of the laptop, and the SSD has now reappeared under the "Add backups" within Preferences -> Manage Backups, as below. I will monitor to see if it disappears again like it did after my last reboot. But the sync icons are still not showing up.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey plutogenie, thanks for reaching out to the Dropbox Community.
Before anything, I would actually suggest allowing the application to finish syncing and doing any updates it needs to do.
You can confirm this, by hovering over the Dropbox icon in your system tray; does it show that it's "up to date" now?
Also, if you go to your backups page online, do you see the external drive?
Let me know and we'll go from there.
Hi Hannah
Yes, the Dropbox icon is saying everything is 'Up to date'. The external drive appears in the 'backups page' link, and is still appearing under Preferences -> Manage Backups section of the Dropbox client app on the laptop.
However, the first problem I mentioned above, which I thought was related to the external drive issue, is still occurring. That is, the sync icons in the Dropbox folder under File Explorer are still missing.
If I right-click on a folder or file, the Dropbox options are listed (e.g. Copy Dropbox link, Share, Transfer a copy, etc), and the files/folders are syncing with my online account.
But Dropbox will be pretty much useless to me without the sync icons appearing (like the do with OneDrive, Google Drive, etc) in File Explorer so I know the status of each file/folder. It is not acceptable to have to right-click everything to see if the option is 'Make available offline' or 'Make online-only' to determine the status of the file.
Should I reinstall Dropbox? As I said above, the Dropbox Help solution of quitting and restarting Dropbox did not fix the issue, and Dropbox Help offered no other possible causes.
Thank you,
Plutogenie
- Hannah
Hey plutogenie, happy Monday!
Of course, it's super important to have your sync icons, they're part of the app anyway.
I don't think the backup is related to that issue, but can you please follow the steps here, to see if they help?
