Dropbox not recognizing external drive or showing sync icons

[plutogenie]

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 syncing with my online Dropbox account while on the Basic plan. The files in the Dropbox folder are still syncing fine with my online account.

I am not sure if the two problems are related, so I thought I should mention both in the one post.

The first problem is the sync icons are missing in the Dropbox folder on the PC. I don't recall if they were visible under the Basic plan on this PC because I access Dropbox folder via my iPhone and Surface laptop instead, where the icons are visible on the latter. On my Acer I only access Dropbox files via links pinned to Word, Excel, etc so I never went into the Dropbox folder. See the following image:

The second problem is that I'm trying to use Dropbox Plus to backup (not sync) data on an external SSD, but Dropbox is not recognising/finding/seeing the SSD. This is what has happened, and what I've tried, so far:

The SSD was already connected to the computer as a D drive. All other applications can access it, write to it, etc. It shows up in File Explorer. The SSD is NTFS format (which Dropbox help says is compatible), and is a Sandisk Portable Extreme connected to a USB-C port on my laptop.

Once I started the trial, I went into the Dropbox Desktop App to find the SSD (under Preferences -> Manage Backups) to select folders to backup, but I could only see the PC (C:) under "Add a backup". See below:

I shutdown the laptop, disconnected the SSD, restarted the laptop and reinserted the SSD. Dropbox popped up with the notification asking if I want to backup the drive, and I selected Yes. I was then able to select the test folder I wanted to backup. The SSD showed up under "Add backup" when I went into Preferences -> Manage Backups, so I thought all was good.

Dropbox did nothing with the folder for about two hours. Under the "Backup" tab when you click on Dropbox in the taskbar, it kept saying 0% backed up and no activity showed at all. (I don't have an image of this.)

When I went into Preferences -> Manage Backups again, I noticed that the SSD had disappeared again from under the "Add backup".

Suddenly the backup started, but the SSD is still not shown. It is the same as the above image, as though the SSD is no longer visible to Dropbox.

These problems with Dropbox do not fill me with much confidence about paying for a plan if these basic aspects don't work reliably.

What should I do next to try to fix the problem? Should I uninstall Dropbox completely from the Acer, reinstall? I know this will delete the Dropbox folder on my Acer (I have a local backup and can copy the files back to reduce download time) and I will need to set up the SSD backup again. If I do that, will I need to delete the original SSD backup in the online Dropbox account and start again? Do the sync icon and SSD issues together suggest that my installation of Dropbox might be corrupted somehow, and that is why there are so many problems?

There are no problems with the SSD itself. As I say above, it works fine with all other applications. It is only Dropbox which cannot recognise/see it.

Many thanks for your help and suggestions.

Plutogenie

[plutogenie]

 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.

[plutogenie]

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]

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.

[plutogenie]

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?

[plutogenie]

Hi @Hannah 

Thank you for the link. I had not come across that thread before in relation to the sync icons despite my Google searches.

I am assuming that I installed Dropbox with admin permissions because I am the only user of my laptop. All installations that I have done come up with a dialogue asking if I'm sure etc. So I don't think that applies.

I therefore looked at the second point in the answer about the limit of 15 overlay icons in Explorer. I checked the registry as instructed and found the list as follows:

The 15th in the list is the one highlighted, which means that 6 of the Dropbox overlay icons would be excluded based on the thread respondent's information.

I understand that you probably cannot advise in relation to Win10 changes, but some additional searching I did about the overlay limit of 15 suggests that in Win10 that issue was resolved in the case of OneDrive because they now use a Status column instead of image overlays. Does that mean I could reorder the overlays to list the OneDrive icons after Dropbox icons? Would this be the only way to solve the sync icon issue relating to Dropbox in Win10?

Regards,

Plutogenie

[plutogenie]

My further Googling suggests that the main Dropbox sync icons needed are Ext01-04. If it is true that the first 15 are used by Explorer, then it means those 4 icons should at least be showing up I would expect. If that is true, then it would appear that the limit of 15 does not explain the issue I am encountering because at least those 4 should be appearing.

Is my understanding correct? If so, does that mean reinstalling and double checking admin privileges would be necessary?

[plutogenie]

I've now read some forums saying that 4 of the 15 are reserved for the OS, which means that only the first 11 are displayed effectively. For e.g. see Wikipedia 

If that is correct, then it means that the answer in the link you provided is not 100% correct, and that only the first 11 are, in effect, used. If that is true, then the first 4 Dropbox icons would be ignored because they start at 12.