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Forum Discussion
Disaster: Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users :(
In case anyone's unaware... if you're a Mac user storing your Dropbox on an external drive, you'll shortly lose that ability. https://talk.tidbits.com/t/dropbox-drops-support-for-storing-files-on...
This is also extremely worrisome to our future as well. We've spent years revolving around this feature and it is absolutely business critical. Without this feature of moving the sync folder anywhere, our entire sector of business will come to a complete stop. We use this feature so much because of the advantages it brings to processing, rendering and handling files locally that we can not do efficiently in the cloud. As of right now, we're being advised to not update the OS and thus the app will not get updated and remove the feature. However when we bring a new computer onboard, we will be forced to use the new OS that the machine ships with and will not be able to run a legacy OS and will be forced into the app version without the folder relocation. This is very worrisome. Without this particular feature, if we're forced to change our workflow, we're probably going to have to change our platform altogether. It would be a tough sell to attempt to use and pay for two different systems. We really don't want to leave Dropbox! You've been so great to us for so long!
Help us Dropbox Team, You're our only hope!
KzDbx
Community Manager
Community ManagerHello everyone. Thank you for your feedback.
We understand that this is a significant pain point for you and your teams that rely on having Dropbox sync on external drives.
Currently, the File Provider API only supports your Dropbox folder in ~/Library/CloudStorage. We are actively working on a solution to support external drives on the updated Dropbox for macOS. While we work to implement a solution, customers who have their Dropbox folder on an external drive will not be migrated to the updated macOS experience. External drive support will continue to work as usual on your current experience.
We will keep you updated when we have more details to share.
"While we work to implement a solution, customers who have their Dropbox folder on an external drive will not be migrated to the updated macOS experience. External drive support will continue to work as usual on your current experience."
Hallelujah! Thank you, Dropbox, for listening.
May I suggest that in the future, for those of us who contacted Customer Support directly, you give us mere mortals confirmation that our feedback is being taken seriously and being passed upwards?
I made an attempt at that and was told outright by the service person that they would not escalate the issue. After asking to escalate the issue 6 times, I was told:
"Charlotte: Unfortunately, I cannot escalate your case, I'm really sorry that I can't help more with this"
As a Business Advanced customer, that's completely unacceptable.
You were ->this<- close to losing us as a customer; in fact we were testing out OneDrive today to see if it'd fit our needs.
Not realizing this was a limitation I upgraded one of my laptops to the new version. Anything saved on the laptop running the new version is not syncing with my main system with external storage. How can I revert my laptop to the old version of DropBox?
Thanks,
Pete
I don't think you can go back to the old version. It auto-updates, and so far as I know DropBox doesn't let you revert to older versions.
As a temporary workaround (and it may be permanent if it works well) I'm now using Mountain Duck for syncing to my external drive:
THANK GOODNESS!!!
This issue had me spinning out for days, now, hardly allowing me to think of anything else, because it would have impacted my workflow gravely, or rather, made it impossible to work with my clients and sub-contractor as I had been for over a decade.
Finally, there is hope that this will all be taken care of in due time, and my files are safe on my external NVMe's, in the meantime. I had just invested over $2000 in external RAID and NVMe storage solutions to replace the spinning drives that previously held my 2,2TB Dropbox file library, and was overjoyed to finally use them as if they were stored on internal storage...and then the bad news, which made my heart sink.
Thank you for giving this the urgent care it deserves and working on avoiding a mass exodus from Dropbox to...well...where would we go?Can I just clarify one thing? We have updated one Mac Studio to Ventura 13.2 and Dropbox Sync is still working to an external 16TB GRaid SSD. Should that be the case?
Just to reinforce what others have said, if it is no longer possible to be able to use an external volumes to sync, this is a massive problem for us. We daily sync TBs of material up and down all over the world, and have built a very robust workflow around this at The BBC. All our paths are the same, for each member of the team eg. VOLUMES/CLICK DROPBOX and those drives are external. Even a 4TB internal Volume will not work, for many of us as we need much more headroom.
I know that Apple have their reasons for doing this, not least security, but with millions of users relying on Dropbox Sync for their workflows, it seems inconceivable that Dropbox can't come up with a solution/ workaround.
If we can get clarity on Ventura still working with external Dropbox Sync that would be good, many thanks."Even a 4TB internal Volume will not work, for many of us as we need much more headroom."
Glad to see I'm not the only one using 16TB SSD. Dropbox would fix the situation by simply offering more storage space so that we can all use large SSDs (internal in my case). But it seems that Dropbox in 2023 still lags 10 years behind in terms of what their customers need. 3/4TB hard limits are ridiculously low plans for any serious professional out there.
I don't think that's issue at all we have 30PetaBytes available to us! This is one of, where it get's stored. Of all the cloud syncing services Dropbox is really the best out there for ease of use and reliability. I can't really fault it. We are syncing Terabytes of stuff continually. Apple have changed their frameworks, they no doubt have good reason, as they are rightly obsessed with security. Dropbox will hopefully respond with a solution soon.
Beware if you are setting up a new machine. While doing a restore/data migration to a machine I was using as a loaner, the Dropbox app forced the change. I've two computers running latest Mac OS and DB applications (DB v168.4.4802 Mac OS 13.1.) and while doing a data migration coping one to a temporary machine (for a repair loner period on one computer) the new computer forced the update disabling external drive usage after the data migration. The two existing machines did not force the change yet,
Due to my business workflow of working with large amounts of data (larger than the internal drives of my computers) I'll need to find another service if Dropbox can't find a way to make this work...
Another major gripe is if my external drive where my DB folder lives becomes disconnected, DB needs to NOT delete my entire Dropbox account. Have had this happen 2-3 times now and most recently it took support and the restorations team 7-9 days to restore my account, where I was waiting 24 hours per reply from the restore team. While I'm grateful for the restore team's help, it was unacceptable it took over a week to get my data back while paying $300 a year for Dropbox.
Dropbox if you can't fix these two issues, I have to move on and you'll lose a 10+ year customer.
- I appreciate that Dropbox sees that this change is a significant problem (putting it mildly). What’s the timeline for an accommodation for Mac users? I can’t just have Dropbox taking hard drive space by surprise, with no option to stop it.
It’s shameful that longtime customers are finding out about this by accident in the forums. Quietly rolling out an experience this bad is a slippery slope.Just so I full understand where we are now. If I buy a new Mac this week (which I have to do) which will come pre-installed with Ventura, can I *currently* install my dropbox folder on an external drive, whilst Dropbox try & fix this messy situation? I sure can't afford to buy one with a 4TB internal drive at Apple prices!
Just buy 4TB or even 8TB internal Mac to be honest yes it's costly but so much more effective than having to rely on external storage cloud sync. External disks even SSDs are not an option for anything having to do with real-time sync such as heavy video editing, music production, AI and computational projects etc. (I mean in 2023, we're in the future already, not living in the 90s anymore lol which sometimes Dropbox feels like)
Also it's way faster (6000 MB/s - for the M1 anyway, Apple messed up with the M2 as SSD speeds went down surprisingly, so I'd wait for the M3 if you're not getting a M1 yet) than even the faster external SSDs like SanDisk which unfortunately as of today only reach more or less 2'000 MB/s (so I only use those as TimeMachine backups of the internal Mac drive) and are limited to 4TB (SanDisk is working on the first 8TB dongle but it's going to take a few more years I'm afraid as it stands :/).
I really don't know how you guys keep saying you rely on external drives to sync 10s of TBs of data as individual, professional or even more so as business with many people relying on external sources. Very unreliable in my opinion, even before the Dropbox upgrade / sync issue.
Just buy 8TB internal disks people and PLEASE DROPBOX FINALLY EXPAND YOUR PRICE PLANS FOR THE PRO PLAN 3TB (+1 extra max) IS WAY TOO SMALL I NEED AT LEAST 15/20TB OPTION to back up my entire data + some headroom just in case to be safe. Ready to pay 100+ a month for it.
I recall several posts in this very long thread that say that while Dropbox is considering solutions to this problem, they're waiting to roll this out to external-drive users. If I'm remembering that correctly, it's not exactly true. It's the only way to explain why one of my three machines--the only one that doesn't rely on an external drive--tried the local download last night to its 512GB drive.
So, it appears that Dropbox is rolling this out by app, rather than by account. That machine is fairly useless to me now if it doesn't sync, so I'm going to uninstall Dropbox from it and use it as the test for Sync.com today. Way to lose a 13-year customer, Dropbox.
I'd like to say that it's sad to see this happening. But it's not. It's what happens when you treat clients the way they have treated us.
Of course, it's too bad you have to go through this. And I think you are not by any means alone. I think a great number are heading out and are not coming back.
It really pained us as well. We had been with the many years just like you. We had the entire workflows set up that had to be carefully figure it out again. Fortunately, Sync.com was and is up to the task. I think they must be benefiting something fierce.
I'd like to personally voice my disgust to dropbox. You failed me on numerous points. I have gone into them at length previously and won't do it here at this point for a bit again. But I intend to keep on putting pressure and letting everybody know that there are other options that will treat them the way customer should be treated.
Yes, having external HDD support for Dropbox/mac is a must in our use case.
All (and I mean all), our users are video editors who often are working from laptops which obviously don't have space to support their work. Not having external HDD support on mac's kills dropbox entirely for us, with no workaround!
I hope you will solve this problem soon. This would be a deal breaker for me and my business and I'd need to cancel my pro account.
- Wonderful news! Thank you for listening, we look forward to more details. JC
- SOOOOOO GLAD you heard this feedback Kevin! We’ve been business users for over ten years now and would have had to rethink our entire workflow and probably find another sync solution if this update was forced.
I’d echo others here that trying to get answers via customer service on this type of issue is incredibly frustrating. But I am thrilled to see it’s on your radar and you’ll find a solution. - Just got an email stating that with the update external drives won’t be supported. Indeed a disaster and a dealbreaker for my whole workflow. Actively looking for an alternative service
Just curious - how much data had your stored on your external device(s)?
Is this a new 'official' e-mail from Dropbox received yesterday, and/or a new notification in the app?
The only 'good thing' (I know it's terrible news for you guys) out of this story would be that Dropbox would be forced to finally offer more space vs. their current plans, because for all of you guys 3TB won't cut it anymore. Like how come Google Drive easily provides 10TB, 20TB and 30TB extensions within a minute, and Dropbox only has 2TB and 3TB (+1TB extra max) that's beyond my understanding.
Good luck to all!
I have 2TB on my external devices. It was an official mail from Dropbox announcing the updated app.
