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Forum Discussion
Multiple Dropbox Folders Removal
I have two Dropbox folders after a messed up move process with one synced, and one not, but I cannot remove the unsynced one without possibly deleting the cloud storage as well.
For the move proces...
Hey Garrett, amazing job on the screenshots, you're a pro!
After checking everything, it seems that the app is working precisely how it should. The new Dropbox folder has all the syncing icons, and syncs the changes back and forth to the web.
The exact opposite happens to the "bad Dropbox" on the old path. Now, it's also important to note, that 4TB is a lot of storage.
I would suggest keeping your device open, and embracing yourself with some patience and the deletion should eventually take place. Have you given it lots of time to delete everything?
Do you get any errors?
Hi Megan, the app’s syncing status is up to date and the original messed up (D:) location was dragged and dropped into the sub-folder.
The Dropbox syncing icons are present in the new (D:) location directly in the drive, and there are no syncing icons present in the older (D:) location in the sub-folder. Before I dragged and dropped the old location into the sub-folder, there were also no syncing icons present, so that didn’t change with that action. Also, to clarify after looking at an article about the sync icons, the synced icon is the gray cloud, which is Online-only, and the not synced icon is the gray X for me. For the older (D:) location that is not synced, the folder itself has no symbols at all, but the individual files inside of the folder each have the gray X’s. Thanks for the response!
Megan
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHey Garrett_High2001, could you send me a couple of screenshots too?
Also, if you delete any content from the old (D:) location, does that reflect on the website too, despite the icons being present?
These first two screenshots are of the Dropbox folders’ locations in file explorer.
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In the next three screenshots, I made a text file named “test1” in the New Dropbox folder and another file named “test2” in the Old Dropbox folder. When looking at Dropbox on the website, the test1 file from the New Dropbox folder synced in the same spot online, but the test2 file did not. Additionally, test2 is not visible in the New Dropbox folder in file explorer and vice versa.
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Another thing I found out when testing is that the files in the Old Dropbox folder are corrupted. I took a screenshot of the same file when opened in each folder, and the Old Dropbox shows it is corrupted and all of the files have a gray X, and the New Dropbox opens the file without a problem and the files are synced with their symbols.
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To test the deletion request, I deleted a PNG file named “Layer 2” in the Old Dropbox folder, and no changes were made to the file on file explorer or on the online website.
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Lastly, I am including a screenshot of the sync status for dropbox, the folder properties for the New and Old Dropboxes, and what is displayed when I try to delete the whole Old Dropbox folder. Despite saying that it only takes up 11.2GB on the disc, it shows it is discovering the entire Dropbox (over 4TB) when trying to delete. I am thinking that it might have stored every single file on there locally, but because they are all corrupted they only take up 11.2GB instead of 4.57TB since the files have no real data. If that is the case though, it is still confusing as to why it shows it discovers 4TB still when deleting since only 11.2GB is actually present.
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- Megan
Hey Garrett, amazing job on the screenshots, you're a pro!
After checking everything, it seems that the app is working precisely how it should. The new Dropbox folder has all the syncing icons, and syncs the changes back and forth to the web.
The exact opposite happens to the "bad Dropbox" on the old path. Now, it's also important to note, that 4TB is a lot of storage.
I would suggest keeping your device open, and embracing yourself with some patience and the deletion should eventually take place. Have you given it lots of time to delete everything?
Do you get any errors?
Thanks Megan, figured I’d rather have too much info than not enough for the response. We have had a problem in the past in my group where someone accidentally deleted the entire Dropbox folder thinking it was just their local one and the entire thing had to be restored, so we were a little hesitant to just delete the entire thing without troubleshooting first. I think we will do a backup of the bad Dropbox folder onto our network storage drives just in case something goes wrong, but I think it is fine to be deleted now after all of the testing. The last time I tried deleting I let it run the whole time and canceled it in the end once it asked me to permanently delete it because it was too big to recycle. No errors showed up, so it should be fine, and I just canceled because I hadn’t backed it up at that point yet. I’ll do a backup and try to delete the folder and get back to you.
