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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...
The alias doesn't solve the problem.. the problem is many people who are concerned have terabytes of data on their external drives and not enough space on their internal drives. The alias link doesn't solve that.
An 'alias' has never worked properly. For years I have used a sym link (symbolic link). For those who don't know, it's like a smarter alias.
The tiny original lives where Dropbox wants it and the real stuff is on an external.
Years ago I was using a free sym link maker but it seemingly became unsupported with a later Mac OS. I then just bought a cheap one off the App Store for a couple of bucks and it's been great. I'm not sure that will solve this upcoming issue, but apart from this thread, I've heard nothing else about this change.
Appalling. I really don't know what to say.
I have been using Dropbox for as long as I can remember, I have files in there from 2009 so let's say I started using it around then. Over 13 years
Sure it is not perfect, but I don't need to think about it, I just use it.
It is integral to my work and play. I have so many apps that use Dropbox to sync their preferences, watch folders with various rules and automations, other cloud services like Epsonconnect, various Wordpress sites backing up daily to it, the more I think about it the more the I worry.
I physically feel sick thinking about how much this is going to affect and break.
It doesn't make a difference, as there is no going back, we are being told what we have used for years is going to be taken away whether we like it or not.
And I do not believe for a second that such disruption and regression was unavoidable. Work it out, develop your own API or encryption, or do stuff behind the scenes that pushes stuff around, but do what it takes to not have to tell your customers what you are telling us now.
We should not get a popup saying "we are going to upgrade you now and that upgrade is going to break this this and this, and won't be able to do this this or this ever again"
Something as big as this should be apologetically announced, with ample time (at least 12 months) to sort things out to work with the changes, with the options to export all your data to another service.
Given the amount of work it will take to make Dropbox usable for me again, I will probably kludge something together myself that will perform the basics rather than continue to give you money
I know I probably don't make much sense with what I have written, but I am fuming, absolutely livid.
Continuing on from my earlier comment:
digisam wrote:
And I do not believe for a second that such disruption and regression was unavoidable. Work it out, develop your own API or encryption, or do stuff behind the scenes that pushes stuff around, but do what it takes to not have to tell your customers what you are telling us now.
Yesterday when looking for alternatives I installed a self hosted option to see if that had any restrictions.
I was able to put my "library" where I wanted, including an external drive.
Granted I had to give the application permission to use the location I wanted to use, but isn't that true of most applications?
If Dropbox can explain why they are simply holding up their hands and saying "We know it is a massive pain point for you, but we had no choice, Apple made us do it" then I would like to hear it. Until then I don't believe that statement is true, if anything it sounds like nonsense.
Every other application on my Mac can read and write to files anywhere on my laptop, internal, external as well as network drives. So why can't Dropbox?
