You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
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Closed
Can we have more folder options like custom folders or sub-folders to add to Computer Backup?
Right now, the automated backup option in Dropbox allows me to sync my Documents, Desktop and Downloads folders. By far the biggest - and most important - folder on my computer is the Music folder though. I can imagine for other people it's Pictures. Could we have a way to automatically backup those folders too?
To be really ambitious: would we be able to clone our computer on Dropbox? I used to have an Apple Time Machine that allowed you to do just that. If your computer broke down or was stolen, you could buy a new one, let it download the clone, including not just your documents but your applications and presets too, and you'd be good to go!
Please let Dropbox be the new Time Machine.
Under the "Backup" option in the dropbox app for Windows, currently theres an option to back up certain folders, such as Desktop, Music ... and so on.
I want an option to add custom folder to back up.
Reason. My setup is
At D:\Data I have my personal folders and files
At D:\Dropbox\Data I have my personal folders and files, that is beeing sync. to my Dropbox online
I want this option under 'Backup' to be "Add custom folders" so I can backup D:\Data to D:\Dropbox\Data
Please allow us to choose any number of multiple folders on our computers. I would love to back up a folder on my one drive, another folder on my external drive, and you can see where this is going.
I sadly cancelled our business account which we were going to include for the entire group, because of this feature.
Dropbox is loosing market share to companies like one drive and google that can currently do this.
I really love dropbox and their values, and I'm sure dropbox engineers get a million feature updates/requests/bugs everyday but this one feature is actually affecting Dropbox's bottom line.
Limiting file back ups toDesktop, Documents and Downloads is dumb and make the entire point of the back up feature useless.
Many computers have more than one internal drive. I have such a computer. My C drive is where the OS (Win10) and all programs are loaded, however this drive is only 500GB. I use my D (also internal) for Documents and working space. This drive is 2TB, I also have an E drive, also internal, that I keep pictures and music on. It is 4TB.
I wanted to use Dropbox Backup for the backup of all my data. Dropbox by default loads onto the C drive. It is not uncommon for the SYNC'd data to exceed the size of the C drive. So I have moved my SYNC preference to my E drive and all seems to be OK.
Because of internet speed and size of data I want to keep the smart sync set to local. I have a travel laptop that has a 500gb size so I keep Dropbox SYNC onto C drive and web default set to On-Line. This allows me to access documents and data on my home PC's D and E drives while on the road without filling up the travel laptop C drive.
On my Home PC I want to use Backups to backup Documents and Downloads (my D drive) and Music and Pictures and Videos (my E drive) but the Backup routine wants to have these folders located on the C drive (which is an obvious issue due to size limits). However the backup routine will not "look" across different drives; therefore, Dropbox Backup is of no use (in my circumstance)
It would be most helpful to allow Dropbox Backup preference to look across different internal drives and Backup this data.
RFWalker3
Dropbox user since 2008
This sounds like a great idea!
Dropbox keeps improving, which is good. Now it is able to backup parts of my computer outside of the Dropbox folder: the standard Windows folders such as Documents.
But I mostly use my own folder structure, not Documents, for my important work. So I need Dropbox to work outside of the special Dropbox folder and the special Windows folders. For example, I would like to add C:\MyProjects\ThisProject to automatic coverage by Dropbox, whether the Dropbox company wants to call this "backup" or not.
The Dropbox company is starting to waver from its insistence on using a Dropbox folder. First, it was the Selective Sync feature. Now it is the Backup feature. Why does the Dropbox company change so slowly, and in such a complicated way?
Windows NTFS Journalling works with any folder on a computer.
Some of us prefer to add the folders we wish to be backed up by Dropbox, instead of using a special Dropbox folder or one of the special Windows folders.
ADDED:
A good manual workaround is to find your SendTo folder (on my computer it is at C:\Users\USER\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo), and add to it a Shortcut to C:\Dropbox\backup . Also, create the "dropbox\backup" folder.
Now, every time you would like to manually backup a file or folder, go to File Explorer, right-click the file, and choose your backup shortcut. That will copy it to backup in Dropbox.
If you want automatic backup, without any action on your part, you have to vote up suggestions like this one, because the Dropbox company cannot figure out for itself which features are most useful to its customers.
I'd like to add that it's not useful to HAVE to have Dropbox on the same drive as the folders you want to back up. I store the vast majority of my files on a secondary hard drive (my faster, smaller SSD has my OS, and my larger HD is used for storage). Since Dropbox tells me I need to keep my Dropbox folder on the same drive as my OS, this means I can't back up the stuff that needs to be backed up.
That is a completely different issue, and a good one. It deserves its own thread, so ideally you would delete your posting here and post again in its own thread.
Please provide an option to sync arbitrary folders on our computer. Even if it's a limited number of base folders, heck, even if it's just three (or, perhaps, eight, sixteen?), that would be fine. Limiting this feature to three specific pathnames on a specific hard drive as is the case for the new backup feature severely limits its usability.
Agreed! The backup feature feels fairly severely limited if I can't tell it what to back up.
Backing up just Desktop, Documents and Downloads is not very helpful.
Desktop - generally nothing but shortcut icons. Maybe some temporary current work.
Documents - a massively over-subscribed space where just about every program I ever install will create its own folders and files. Not a useful place for me to put my own work files in.
Downloads - a totally ephemeral, throw-away space.
Backing up _only_ these is probably a bit pointless for many users.
Completely agree--if they would just allow Dropbox to sync arbirtrary folders, we could put this all to rest. Not sure what the attachment is to the Dropbox folder anyway--generally, it's where OTHER people are sharing/putting files that sync to my computer, and where I put things I want to share with others. If this were the only way to use this service, you wouldn't ever need the larger storage plans, like the one I've been paying you for years for, and can't even use since you removed the ability to sync files behind symlinks.
Moving the default locations of the user's folders (Documents, Desktop, Downloads etc.) is a very common practice especially with hybrid disks, where the SSD disk houses the OS and HDD houses User's libraries. Dropbox only backs up user's libraries when they are in the default location C:\Users\username. So when a user moves the libraries to an alternate location (D:\), even when the Dropbox library in the same alternate location, an error message results. This way Dropbox automatic backup options prevent backing up these folders
Can this be solved? Shouldn't be difficult? Otherwise keeping the 2 TB storage capacity plan for annual (not quite symbolic) fee is ludicrous
Thank you
I just came here for this exact same dilemma. All of my Windows data directories have been moved from their default locations (Documents, Downloads, etc) to my D: drive, where my Dropbox folder is also located. However, there's no way to change the Dropbox Backup settings to scan alternate directory paths.
This is either a very odd oversight, or born from the same skewed logic that only lets the Dropbox install on my tablet run on its internal storage (instead of the SD Card).
Completely agree, but for slightly different reasons: I'm on a mac and the autosync feature allows Desktop, Documents, and Downloads folder. I use Dropbox to store all my music and would like it to mirror non of these: I'd like it to mirror my iTunes music folder so anything I buy or add automatically transfers to my Dropbox library. I have friends that are photographers and videographers and would like the same. Being able to click a folder and autosync it so it's constantly backed up to Dropbox would be so useful.
If you want to call this a "Backup" feature you must let us tell it what files / folders to back up and where the files / folders are located!! Instead, you are telling us we can only back up three folders (Documents, Downloads, and Desktop) and that they must be on the C: drive!! Really? Do you people at Dropbox keep all your data in just those 3 folders on your C: drives? I don't think so.
You need to get this fixed soon or I won't continue paying for 2 TB of storage that I can't use. Come on guys, you can do better!
Currently included with the Computer Backup functionality are the following folders:
- Desktop
- Documents
- Downloads
Please also include the default locations for Computer Backup during setup and in [Manage backup]:
- Music
- Pictures
- Video
Some folks may wish to have all "Libraries" as a selectable option, beyond the defaults.
Thanks for the consideration!
You can use the dropbox app and include these folder in the app and store you files there and it will stay backed up in dropbox.
Add an option to backup external hard drives (besides the Desktop, Documents and Doenload folders) using the new Dropbox Backup.
I don't want to backup my whole harddrive. right now I can only back-up large sections of my harddrive. in apple that is desktop, documents, music, downloads. i only want to back up subfolders of those folders.
Hello DropBox Community Members!
Please vote for my feature request to slightly modify the pop-up that asks if you want to backup a recently connected external hard drive to ask if you want to backup a SPECIFIC VOLUME on a recently connected external hard drive. Thank you.
Great! I'm looking for a way to add any folder you want to the backup/sync. I would use it to sync my "fonts" folder between my Mac's so they are always up to date!
Ross_SDropbox Staff
Oh interesting! I can pass this feedback on to my collegue who deal with this.
Creating a full OS backup creates some issues, for example we sync any file that changes - with system files they often update everytime the computer runs, so we need to ensure we are not in a constantly syncing state - but one step before a full disk backup is an interesting area.
There's real value in ensuring that all your important personal files (music folders etc) are included in the syncing, and that's certainly the goal.
Many thanks for highlighting this.
After removing the ability to follow/respect symlinks while syncing, I'd hoped that the “Back Up Folders” feature would be a serviceable replacement… but, alas — it's restricted to only a few, select folders.
Could we get support for backing up arbitrary folders such as e.g., Music or Pictures?
