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Forum Discussion
Problem transferring files from desktop dropbox folder to an external drive
I've used Dropbox for 2 years without issue. My files are located in the dropbox folder on my computer. It has worked flawlessly. Suddenly, when I try to transfer a file (located within dropbox on my...
Hi Lee,
This happens because your external drive uses a different file system than your internal drive. Your internal drive (where your Dropbox folder is located) uses NTFS, while your external drive most likely uses FAT32. The NTFS file system can store additional properties with a file, while FAT32 cannot do that. Dropbox uses this feature of the NTFS file system to store additional properties for the files in the Dropbox folder.
When you try to copy a file from the Dropbox folder to the external drive you receive that warning because the file system on the external drive cannot store additional properties. Therefore, those additional properties cannot be copied to the external drive.
You will not see that warning message when you transfer a file which has no additional properties (like most of the files outside of your Dropbox folder).
However, you can safely ignore this message because those additional properties are relevant only in the context of the Dropbox folder and only for the Dropbox application.
Hope this helps.
Razvan
I can't solve the photo-specific issue, but my crude but effective solution for that damned dialog is a 7-line script. Whenever the dreaded dialog appears, the script presses Alt-A for "do this for all", and Alt-Y for "yes, lose the properties."
If you can bear the risk of downloading an .exe file, get it at http://www.filedropper.com/stop-copy-dialog, and add it to your Startup Folder (step 4 below). ...but there have been a lot of bad programs hiding as AutoITscripts, so it's safer to take a 10 minutes and compile it yourself. It's free and not terribly hard:
1. Download and install AutoITScript from autoitscript.com. (It's free and widely trusted alternative to VBScript. I used it because I've found VBScript unreliable in detecting Windows dialogs that are rapidly appearing/disappearing and modal, inactive, minimized, or otherwise odd. And, AutoIT is absurdly easy to compile to a standalone .exe, which I like.)
2. From the Github repository (https://github.com/joshwhitk/suppress-property-loss-dialog-during-copy-in-Windows-Explorer), save only the script file "stop-copy-dialog.au3" to your desktop. Open it in any text editor and read it carefully. When you're convinced it's harmless, rename it if you like and continue.
3. On your desktop, right-click this .au3 file. and choose "compile script (x86)" from the context menu (AutoIT added these). An .exe file (e.g "stop-copy-dialog.exe") will be created on your desktop. (You can uninstall AutoIT and delete the .au3 file now.)
4. Move this .exe file to your Startup folder (where? press Win-R to run shell:startup)
Run it, or reboot, and you're done! It runs in the background forever. When this (or any AutoITS script) is running, you'll see a new icon in your tray. It's a small white tab with a green square on the left.
Obviously, this script is a crude workaround. I would LOVE IT if someone figured out how to suppress those dialogs in the first place!
Please update Github with a text note if you do know of a better way (ie a registry setting): https://github.com/joshwhitk/suppress-property-loss-dialog-during-copy-in-Windows-Explorer
cheers-
-Josh
Josh Whitkin
Oakland, California 94611
whitkin.com
