Urgent Help Needed: Photos Library Sync Issue with Dropbox after copying them to Vault

[Kotik3000]

Hello dear Dropbox Community,

I need your help. Today I have a vacation. But the entire mood has been ruined since the early morning. Dropbox is better than five shots of coffee. Yesterday, I decided to sync my MacBook's Photos library, which is more than 70GB in size, to Dropbox Vault before heading out on a trip for safety reasons. I just copied them in the Dropbox folder on my Mac. I expected everything to be safely uploaded in the morning. However, this morning, Vault showed an empty file, and there’s a 16GB file outside the Vault that named view-only conflicts. Later Vault synced a folder of 2Gb. But even all together, it is not 70Gb of my memories. More than that, I see the original Photos folder in the pictures folder has been removed

These photos mean a lot to me — over a decade of memories. Can you help me find out what happened and how to return my photos?

Thank you a lot!

[Walter]

Hi there @Kotik3000 - sorry to hear about this.

It sounds like you might have moved your photos library to Vault instead of copying it there.

Do you see any additional information in your events page perhaps?

Also, when you say that the folder has been removed from its original location,  can you clarify if you're getting any particular errors?

Let us know more and we'll take it from there.

[Kotik3000]

Hey Walter,

Thank you for your reply. Maybe I moved it instead of copying. But I wasn’t expecting that when I move a library from one folder to another on my Mac it will be cut into peaces and most files get lost.

About event Page. What information shall I look on events page?

No I haven’t received any errors from my MacOS. Where shall I look for them? I haven’t touched my laptop since it happened hoping that we can restore my photos.

[Kotik3000]

I see that Dropbox created a folder View only conflicts at 08:22 a.m. when I was sleeping. There were NO events between this event and uploading another file event. 

[Jay]

Hi @Kotik3000, the Dropbox Vault only remains open for 20 minutes for security purposes. 

Most likely it wasn't possible to add your entire photo library within that period, hence the conflicts created when the Vault was shut.

[Kotik3000]

Hey Jay!

Strange. If it „remains open for 20 minutes“, why does Dropbox send me a notification that it will close after the sync is finished? Also, if it „remains open for 20 minutes, “ why view-only-conflicts 2023-11-05 folder was created at 08:22 a.m., more than 7 hours after I moved the library to vault folder on my Mac?

Why did Dropbox remove 50 Gigabytes of my photos from my laptop? And most importantly how then bring it back?

Please I need help. Those pictures are important for me. 

[Hannah]

Hey @Kotik3000, I really do understand your frustration over this.

However, if the files never made it to Dropbox, there's really no way for them to be retrieved through Dropbox, I'm afraid.

Here's some more info on what a view-only conflict is, but I would definitely suggest searching your computer for the missing files. Did you try your Trash?

[Kotik3000]

Hey Hannah,

They made it to Dropbox. They were in Dropbox folder on my Mac. Why I move 70Gb and receive less than half in the end?

[Rich]

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@Kotik3000 wrote:
They made it to Dropbox. They were in Dropbox folder on my Mac.

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That doesn't mean they made it to Dropbox.

The Dropbox folder on your computer is just a regular folder like any other. Putting files in the Dropbox folder doesn't mean that they made it to Dropbox. It just means that they're in the local Dropbox folder on your computer. The files then need to sync to the Dropbox servers. When that sync is complete, that's when they would have made it to Dropbox.

If the sync process was interrupted or the files were removed from the folder before the sync finished, they wouldn't have made it to the Dropbox servers, and Dropbox would have no way to recover them.

[Kotik3000]

Then why did they disappear from my folder? You probably don’t get it. The problem is not that I don’t have files on Dropbox sever - the problem IS I don’t have them in my Dropbox folder!