How to Sync my second hard drive again to Dropbox

[Steve R.8]

I run a telescope imaging system in California while I live in Virginia. I've had Dropbox installed for a good number of years but some time back I had to stop syncing as the system was in repair. For some reason I can't seem to get sync back on. I have created the folder where the images download from the camera on the California computer located on the E:\SRO_Data drive and at home I have setup Dropbox on the F:\David_SRO\Dropbox\.dropbox. I added new files to the California drive yet nothing is syncing. The whole purpose of Dropbox for me is transferring these 35 MB files as they are acquired and save in California so I don't have a massive amount of data to download in the morning after an imaging session which is nightly if the weather is good. 

I don't see how to activate syncing these drives and must be missing something obvious and will take note if/when I can get this working again.

thanks for any assist

[Jay]

Hi @Steve R.8, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Files in another folder wouldn't be automatically synced to your Dropbox account, unless you'be enabled the Dropbox Backup feature, or have another third party app or service to act as a go-between to sync them to Dropbox.

Could you let me know how exactly files were synced from the E: to your Dropbox account?

This will help me to assist further!

[Steve R.8]

 I honestly don't recall. I had set this up 5-6 years ago. I know Dropbox is installed on the remote computer and it has a dedicated drive and folder for the images to be saved to when down loaded from the imaging system, E:\Dropbox. On that computer I have the E drive with only one folder, Dropbox. As the images are downloaded from the telescope they are saved to that drive and a folder that is created by the imaging script such as M109. Each image has a specific name that indicates object name, date.time, and filter used so no two images are the same name.

Then the home computer has Dropbox installed and designated drive F:\David_SRO\Dropbox which currently has nothing in it. This is where the remote data would download when synced.

Seems I used to have it so when new images were downloaded to the remote system it would save to my local folder at home automatically.

I'm not sure what more I can do to explain the setup. This is all of course over the internet and I have 100Mb connection (fiber) as does the remote observatory site.

[Jay]

Since E:\SRO_Data isn't a Dropbox folder, it can't directly sync to your account like normal, so it sounds like some other software would've been used to transfer the information to your Dropbox account. 

[Steve R.8]

So how do I make it a Dropbox folder?

[Steve R.8]

[Steve R.8]

Or better yet, where can I find step by step instructions on setting up Dropbox. I think key is the fact that when I go to my home computer and look at Dropbox it appears as the above screen capture and I'm not sure where that physically exists but the folder is empty. I'm in the process of replacing the NUC at the telescope location and will need to setup that computer as well, hopefully before sending across the country. And I expect my age and poor memory isn't helping a lot here either.

[Jay]

You'll need to reinstall the Dropbox desktop application on the remote machine to be certain it's working normally, and then test it by adding a file there to see if it appears on your local computer.

[Steve R.8]

I think a college has pointed me to Preferences section to set the Sync settings. At the moment it appears to be promising. I'll check in later, possibly tomorrow to see how this evenings run goes. Should have several hundred files if successful. Otherwise I'll start from scratch maybe.

Thanks for the assist.

[Steve R.8]

I got tied up with running a remote telescope so back again. I'm actually about to send a new NUC out to the telescope site across the country and need to set this computer up to transfer the images files as they download. I can't say my home system is syncing so I'm asking is I uninstall the home computer and reinstall then install on the new computer would this resolve the syncing error? Do I risk any of the already stored data?