We're making changes to the Community, so you may have received some notifications - thanks for your patience and welcome back. Learn more here.
Forum Discussion
Move DropBox out of Library in OSX Ventura?
In OSX Ventura, is it possible to move the DropBox folder someplace where Adobe Bridge can see it (not in OSX Ventura Library)?
I'm a big Adobe Bridge fan, and I wanted to call out a feature ...
I'm trying to understand how best to secure data stored in Dropbox in light of upcoming changes to the Mac version.
I understand that for various reasons (some possibly not under Dropbox's control) the new Mac version of Dropbox will forcibly be stored on the main boot drive under ~/Library/CloudStorage. This is the same drive that holds the OS and User directories, including default locations for potentially large files like Photos. iCloud files are stored there as well.
As of December 2022, most consumer-grade 2022 Macs still top-out at a 2TB drive. In practice, it seems like this means that a Dropbox user on the 2TB plan or larger can no longer store their entire Dropbox locally on a modern consumer-grade MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, MacBook Mini, or iMac. 4TB internal drives are only available on new Mac Studios or Mac Pros at $6,000 and up. So for most Macs on the planet, the Dropbox folder will likely move to an internal drive that is 2TB or smaller.
I don't want to debate this technical decision to move the Dropbox folder to the main drive (many other threads in this forum do that). But all of this data is valuable, and should be backed up. The 3-2-1 backup rule seems to be broadly recommended as a best practice for securing your data. Dropbox itself recommends the 3-2-1 strategy including "you need both onsite and offsite backups".
Thus, it does seem like the forced change of Dropbox folder location means medium-to-heavy Dropbox users (i.e. on the 2TB plan or up) can no longer keep all of their Dropbox files locally on internal drives available on most Macs on the planet. The "online only" option is one way to handle this for day-to-day use, but (at the risk of stating the obvious) online-only files are not available locally to allow for local backups.
So it seems that following this change, Mac users no longer have a straightforward way to implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy to keep multiple local copies of that data. Dropbox, can you help? Given that you recommend the 3-2-1 backup strategy, how should Mac users securely make multiple local copies of their Dropbox data on an ongoing basis, given current hardware constraint on internal Mac drives? Or do you no longer recommend that 3-2-1 backup strategy?
