How can I prevent the Dropbox app from re-syncing everything to my formatted device?

[Lageole]

Hello,

I'm writing you because I will have to format my computer - due to corrupted system problems - and so the question of my dropbox is raising.

I have a video studio with collaborators and we have 45 terabytes of data online. I would like to know the best way to handle this, without loosing anyfile and without experiencing a infinite indexing ?

Maybe there is a way to copy only the directories ? Because I cannot copy 45 TB of data in harddrives to re-copy them again.

Thank you !

[Jay]

Hi @Lageole, thanks for messaging the Community!

Could you just clarify what you're trying to achieve exactly? 

Do you want to copy the account without transferring any data, or without syncing files from the site?

This will help me to assist further!

[Lageole]

Sorry that was not so clear actually !

I have to format my computer, and I want to do this operation achieving two things :
- not losing any of the data on dropbox so unlink properly the account before formatting
- retrive all my dropbox and the indexation after the reinstallation of the system (knowing that I have 45 TB of files sync right now)

I hope it’s better explained ! 🙂

[Jay]

Okay, thanks for the info.

To safely unlink your account, you need to sign out of the Dropbox desktop application on the old machine using these steps, and then uninstall the app for good measure. This will prevent any files from syncing on that machine (including deletions). 

Afterwards, on the new machine, just sign into the same account, and the Dropbox desktop application will begin to sync the files to your machine. Bear in mind that if you're using a Mac device, you might not be able to use an external hard drive if you're on the new File Provider version.

[Lageole]

Ok thanks a lot for the unlik part, it is very clear ! I guess it will prevent any loss even formatting this machine right?

Also, note that I was not so clear about it, but I'm talking about the same machine (but I guess it's the same than another as I will format it).

Now, as I was saying, there is 45 TB of data to synchronise, and I'm afraid that the operation will take for ever. So I was wondering if they would be a way to copy the "offline" architecture / the indexation and copy that on the fresh computer to avoid all the re-indexation?

Or any other way to make this operation faster?

I am sorry my english is not perfect I hope this is clear.

[Nancy]

Hi from me too, @Lageole! 

The solution to this would be what you mentioned in the beginning, I’m afraid. You’d need to copy the data to an external hard drive, and when the Dropbox app is installed again on the formatted device and a new Dropbox folder is created, you’ll need to pause syncing right away and copy - paste the files back in, to prevent the Dropbox app from syncing/downloading everything again from our servers.

After the files are in the Dropbox folder, you can resume syncing and let the app index any differences between your files locally and online.

[Lageole]

But it is impossible for me to download this amount of data...

There is no way to recopy the architecture (which is somehow present offline) in order to avoid this impossible task ? There is no technical solution to simplify such an enormous indexation?

Thanks a lot !

[Nancy]

Just to clarify, are the files/folders within your local Dropbox folder available offline at the moment? Is there any content that’s set to be online-only, or that has been removed from the Dropbox app via selective sync?

If everything is local, you can copy paste your data to an external drive, like you'd do with any other file/folder on your computer, and then copy it back to the new Dropbox folder to be re-indexed, instead of synced anew.

[Rich]

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@Lageole wrote:

There is no technical solution to simplify such an enormous indexation?

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You can avoid the download using the steps that @Nancy described as long as all files were local (No Online-only or Selective Sync), but it's impossible to avoid the re-index of the files, and with 45 TB of data it's going to take a while.

[Lageole]

No most of the files are online actually..

Ok so no solutions for large data like that? I'm a little lost because it would block dropbox for months...