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

sergedb's avatar
sergedb
New member | Level 2
6 years ago

Smart sync on multiple computers

Hi, I upgraded my account to start using Smart sync. I have two deskop computers at home and my laptop to travel around. I started with moving all my finished project 'online only' to free up space...
desktop app
Sync and upload
  • Jane's avatar
    Jane
    6 years ago
    Hey Serge (sergedb), I’d happily clarify matters for you below; thanks for checking with us on the Dropbox Community! 
     
    It would be worth noting that Smart Sync is a Dropbox feature that helps you save space locally on your hard drive & that’s mainly the reason why Smart Sync settings are unique to each device you link to your Dropbox account. That said, as long as your files are updated on your account online as expected (:desktop: ➡️🕸️), you can easily revert them to Online-Only ☁️ on your second device by right-clicking on them ➡️ choose Smart sync & then choose Online-only. Once you do, this will free up space on your hard drive almost instantly. (Note: It might take a bit of time for cached items to be removed from your hard disk initially, where we recommend a system restart.)
     
    From there, it’s advisable to adjust the default setting on your desktop for newly added content to Online-only as well (which denotes that all content will automatically be synced from our website to your desktop/laptop as Online-Only however you can manually download files to your computer when you need them by reverting them to Local :white_check_mark:). 
     
    I hope that this is the answer you were seeking Serge however please do let me know if I you have any follow-up queries. Thanks again! 
ScreenMachine's avatar
ScreenMachine
Explorer | Level 4

Thanks, that's really useful.

OK so my only concern with using Dropbox this way is that I don't know whether Lightroom will try to download the entire photo library as preview, or only do it on-demand when I actually try to edit a file as opposed to just viewing the film-strip.

I might try doing a test on a small library, with a small amount of files to try and find out.

Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
6 years ago
ScreenMachine wrote:

... I don't know whether Lightroom will try to download the entire photo library as preview, or only do it on-demand when I actually try to edit a file as opposed to just viewing the film-strip.

If Lightroom generates thumbnails and previews on the fly, and doesn't store them itself after generation, then it would need access to the file every time. In such a scenario, Dropbox would be forced to download any files that you try to preview within the application.

  • ScreenMachine's avatar
    ScreenMachine
    Explorer | Level 4
    6 years ago
    Yes I would also expect that behaviour.

    I’m investigating smart previews in Lightroom, etc., to see if it will provide a solution to this. If so, this would be a great way of achieving what I want to do with Dropbox.

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!