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.
Forum Discussion
Jon C.10
2 years agoCollaborator | Level 8
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...
- 4 months agoHi Everybody,We’re excited to share that external drive support for Dropbox for macOS on File Provider is now available for testing as a beta feature. This is available to some users today and will be available to additional users on a rolling basis. In order to be eligible to test this feature, please follow the instructions in this Help Center article.Keep in mind that participation in beta programs is subject to the certain terms and conditions. There are certain additional participation requirements:
- This beta is only available to US-based users
- You must be on macOS 15 beta
- You must have an external drive that is APFS formatted and encrypted
Please let me know if you have any further questions!
Jamesgangcc
Collaborator | Level 9
Why spend more money if you don't have to? Oh, right. The American way. The whole point of this cloud business is so you DON"T have to buy a huge internal, right? Isn't that why they make the computers smaller? Because you supposedly don't need the internal? Asterisk? Footnote? Hurdle? Hoop? I thought the cloud was to make it less complicated. You know, like self check out lanes. Ha.
millifoo
2 years agoHelpful | Level 7
"Why spend more money if you don't have to? Oh, right. The American way. The whole point of this cloud business is so you DON"T have to buy a huge internal, right?"
That's one reason, yes. But no the only one:
We use cloud sync with our external huge drives to allow collaboration with audio/video editing. The workflow for lots of media houses with people who collaborate in multiple locations requires files be local (speed of editing and playback), and sync through the cloud not only facilitates that, it also backs up all the files in case of catastrophe.
- shinbeth2 years agoExperienced | Level 13
"We use cloud sync with our external huge drives to allow collaboration with audio/video editing. The workflow for lots of media houses with people who collaborate in multiple locations requires files be local (speed of editing and playback), and sync through the cloud not only facilitates that, it also backs up all the files in case of catastrophe."
That's absolutely my point. No SSD external disk (take SanDisk v2, 2000/sec at best vs. 6-7000/sec for my M2 Macbook Max) can be as fast as local SSDs as of today.
External disks are not an option for professionals because we need the utmost speed of editing and playback indeed while working simultaneously across teams. Same happens when I use large and heavy audio banks such as Kontakt while producing music, I cannot afford to use external disks and rather invest my money in a single huge local SSD to have it all + easily backed up by Dropbox in real time.
So Dropbox I don't really care that you stop syncing external disks but EXTEND THE PERSONAL/PRO PLANS from their currently very limited 2/3/4TB hard limits to 10/20/30TB just the way Google Drive and other competitors have moved to. And don't mention Dropbox Business which sucks balls since it creates a different 3-user repository folder and kind of structure which I've tried before and messes things up. Just simply expand your storage plan and pricing accordingly for 2023 use in developed countries, not just India needs with 200GB plans lol, thanks.
- Jamesgangcc2 years agoCollaborator | Level 9
Thanks, but that doesn't answer my question. No matter, I'm halfway through moving the files to an external for now, and will find another cloud solution. My monthly gets charged on the 28th. I'll use the $130/yr somewhere else. It appears, for my needs, the Googly will be about $40/yr. I'll have canceled by then. I use it rarely, as I say, more for storage, and whenever I go on to "just simply" share a file or folder, it's a labryinth of download, compile, move, upload, save, try and share, share only this way, share if they have an account... don't even try to find where "delete" is hidden. I don't need to be paying for all the bells and whistles I have to navigate through to save and file in the cloud or send to someone maybe 5 times a year. Enough. They can continue upgrading and changing and selling every 90 days to others.
I assume this is a solution.
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