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Forum Discussion
Transfer Dropbox Backup to New Mac
I recently bought a new Mac and used the Apple Migration Assistant to transfer all of my data from my old machine to my new one. This included the Dropbox folder and everything else. The migration went smoothly (in the past I have had issues migrating the Dropbox folder) and now I have all of my files on my new machine exactly as they appeared before. I used Dropbox Backup on my old machine, and so the Music, Movies and Pictures folders are stored inside the hidden folder titled "Mac" in the main Dropbox folder, and their original location is replaced with an alias.
I now would like to set up Dropbox Backup on my new machine to backup these folders exactly like it did on my old one. However, when I go into Dropbox preferences, it asks if I would like to backup my Mac and shows all of the unticked options for folders to backup.
I was wondering what the best way to setup Dropbox Backup on my new computer would be? Do I have to delete the backup, move the folders back into their original location and create a new backup? Or is there a way of telling Dropbox that this machine should inherit the backup of my old machine?
I am still currently in possession of my old machine so I can access things from there if necessary. I thought it would be best to wait and hear the correct way of doing this, since I have tried in the past to fix things very quickly myself making the situation worse, as I have seen other people with similar stories do.
- Jay
Dropbox Staff
Hi creblinho, thanks for messaging the Community!
You could restore from a Dropbox Backup if the Dropbox desktop application detected it correctly.
Otherwise, you can disable the backup, move the folders back to their old location, and create a new backup on the new machine.
If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.
Hi Jay,
Thank you for your response. The dropbox application is aware that the backup of my previous computer exists and it is all still stored online, but i don't think it has detected that this new computer should be identical to the old one. Are you saying I should press "restore from backup" in this following window:
The "Mac" computer is the old machine I migrated from originally (Mac (2) is just my MacBook Air) and it is also seeing my new machine as a new Mac titled "Mac". If I restore from this backup, will it not create two copies of the same folders in my dropbox folder?
The contents of this backup were imported from my original computer using migration assistant, so the folder structure is the same and the folder is hidden inside my dropbox folder as shown below:
I could disable the backup but would have to do so from my old machine. If I disable the backup from there and Dropbox automatically moves the folders back to their original place, what will happen to this backup folder as shown on my new machine? Will it dissappear too? Because so far, I think this is also the main place where all of my files (Movies, Pictures, Music) are stored for this computer.
- Jay
Since you moved to a new computer, the Dropbox desktop application knows that this is a different machine, even if you used the Migration Assistant.
However, given that you've already used Migration Assistant, and that the files were transferred too, this may have unexpected effects which we wouldn't be able to determine.
You could restore the backup to your current machine, though it would be at your own risk since I wouldn't be able to advise what would happen.
- Jay
In general, to avoid any potential conflicts or confusion regarding data, when moving to a new machine, we don't recommend using any non-Dropbox backup/restore process or service (such as Migration Assistant, Time Machine, or other services). This is because, in cases like your own, if the Dropbox Backup feature is enabled, this takes system folders and moves them into the Dropbox folder, which I'm not certain if those services copy across correctly.
The safest method is to restore from a Dropbox Backup (if there is already one on your account), which allows files to return to the same folders as before. The normal files in the Dropbox folder would also sync as per their normal process.
Okay thank you. I would still have to use migration assistant to copy applications etc, but maybe I can untick the Dropbox folder when migrating (although this has also caused problems in the past).
I ended up taking the following steps and some strange things started happening:
- Before going onto my old machine to remove the backup, I quit dropbox on my new machine and moved the folders from the backup location back to their original place (deleting the "Mac" backup folder in Dropbox).
- I went onto my old machine and disabled the backup, which moved all the files from that machine to their original location.
- On my new machine, I relaunched Dropbox and started backing up and it created a new backup called "Mac (3)".
- It seemed to go smoothly and back everything up succesfully, but then randomly after it had finished, it started "backing up" again (which in reality it was actually deleting all of the files in the "Mac (3)" folder). The “GB remaining” figure was getting smaller and not bigger, and the completion figure was switching between 99% & 100%.
It seems to be deleting everything contained in my new backup for some unknown reason. Luckily, I did make a hard copy of all of these files before starting this. I have a screenshot of a recording I made while it was doing carrying out this process:
As mentioned, I have all of the files safely copied onto a separate hard drive. How can I put my files back into the folders and make sure it does not keep doing this?
