I told Dropbox to not backup an external drive; now I've changed my mind

[sixstringbuzz]

The subject pretty much says it all! I'm on a Mac and I connected an external drive (formatted HFS+). A popup came up asking if I wanted to backup this drive to Dropbox and I said no. Now I'd like to explore that service but I can't figure out how to turn backup on for this drive now that I've dismissed the popup. 

Is there a way to turn backup on for this drive other than reformatting it?

[Anwick]

This is clearly still a problem and I've just had a useless conversation with live chat about it! I'm not even sure she understood the issue. 
Come on Dropbox, I'm paying you £700 a year so I expect something better than "how is your drive formatted" when that CLEARLY isn't the issue here!

[iiuuuuii]

Disconnecting and reconnecting the drive while the app is open does not help.

What's needed, is an option in preferences to add external drives, but this so obvious it feels absurd to type it out.

[Guillemmm]

I wonder how come this issue is neglected.
We've purchased a 700€/year plan. Seemed like a bargain, but now I'm encountering this issues (of course i wouldn't back up my drives when my Dropbox was only 3TB!) makes me seriously rethink our purchase...

[Anwick]

I did notice in preferences the other day, trying to suss out another Dropbox issue, that it now displays a list of backup drives and cards that you’ve told it to never back up. So it looks like you can remove them from this list and they should give you the backup option again. I’ve yet to try it and see.

[Guillemmm]

Thanks Anwick, Preferences is the first place I looked, but unfortunately I can't seem to find it!
Under the Backups tab all i see is "Show setup notifications when external drives are plugged-in" with a checkmark, but no further option -at least in the app for Mac OS...

[Hannah]

Hey @Guillemmm, have you tried going to the backups page, to see if you can set up your external drive to be backed up from there?

[Guillemmm]

Hi Hannah: the issue is if a new drive is plugged to the system, it becomes available to backup.
But once stated that I don't want it backed up, there's no way to change my mind.
It doesn't even show up in the backups page.

[Hannah]

Hmm, I see.

Can you please follow these steps, to see if you can reset this preference?

2) Click on the Dropbox icon in your menu bar and then click on your initials/profile pic
3) Select 'Preferences'
4) Click on the 'Account' tab, and then click in the window under the tab (just anywhere will do)
5) Hold down the 'Option/Alt' keys

[Tiffanycrea]

Hello, I tried this solution, I clicked on all these options except the last one, because I could not change the locations of dropbox to my macbookpro.

I still can't see my external drive in backup pages.

I end up getting this hard drive formatted and it finally appeared in backup page. 

Luckily there isn't anything inside and I had another external hard drive for dropbox synchronisation. 

But it would be convenient for us to be able to "reactivate" the backup after you clicked "no" at the first time. 

[hello_box11]

Hello, other than the first time prompt, there is actually a separate backup page which can control all the backup behavior, including external drive backup and computer backup. The way to start this is by going to Preferences > backup > manage backup from desktop.