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Forum Discussion
Backing Up External Hard Drive
I use my laptop to DJ. I have an 256GB internal drive, however my library of audio files is over 1TB. I currently have my audio library stored on an external hard drive and have a 2nd one as a back...
@Mark, that's unfortunate. Especially considering statements such as:
- "Easily access and share your work from any computer, mobile device, or web browser"
- "Back up any file or folder: No matter the file or folder you’re trying to back up — from photos and videos to large CAD files... "
- "Back up any file—anywhere, anytime"
- "Secure and simple cloud file backup"
and others right on the Dropbox front page or one click away from it. I think that's false advertising as so far I have spent in total 4-5 hours trying to back up my files.
Solutions I have explored:
- Symbolic links: would be the easiest, but don't work since Dropbox disabled them recently.
- API: limited to 25000 calls a month (I have more files than that) and is cumbersome and slow.
- Website: Takes hours just to get the list of all the files, then takes 10+ seconds to upload each file, regardless of its size. Browser is unusable during that time.
- Moving the Dropbox folder onto the external drive and moving all the files I need into the Dropbox folder: Sort-of works, but leaves the original folder and the rest of Dropbox features unusable since I don't want to have the drive connected all the time.
The last one seems promising, but I'll have to see how I can make the rest of Dropbox useful again, which means more of my time spent on this "simple cloud file backup" task.
I really don't believe that Dropbox software engineers cannot find a way to add an "upload files/folders" feature. If it's really so, then just give us optional SFTP access for uploading files.
Mark
Super User II
Super User IIIn terms of moving Dropbox to an external drive I cannot recommend you dont do this enough... there is a huge risk of data loss. If the drive disconnects or doesnt connect quick enough Dropbox can delete data - once the drive does connect it doesnt 'readd the files' it does delete them. There are safeguards in place but these are not infallible as posts here show.
@Mark, thank you for the warning. By delete the data, you mean delete it both from cloud and from the drive itself?
So I think I've managed to do it by installing dropbox on a virtual machine, attaching the external drive to it and putting the Dropbox folder on the external drive. Create a new folder on the dropbox.com website, in the main tree. The folder will appears in your Dropbox folder and you move everything from your drive in that folder.
Then you wait until Dropbox uploads all your files to the server. After that, quit Dropbox app, move everything out of the Dropbox folder on the external drive and uninstall Dropbox and delete the Dropbox folder.
This way you can use Selective sync on your regular workstations to hide the backed up folder or set Smart sync to have it online only.
I guess this is what constitutes "Easily backing up any file or folder" in 2021 for Dropbox.
For comparison, in any other paid cloud storage service I have used, you just select the folders on the drive in the app and click Upload. 🤡
