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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...
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.
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.
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.
Buying an 8TB internal drive is ALSO not a real solution for most of us.
And you greatly overstate the need for speed when it comes to drives. I have for 5 years done music on Minis including my current M1 mini, and I use an external drive for all media and samples. My dropbox folder is on that same external drive (SSD). It is completely a non-issue.
One might make an argument that video users might need this, but most video users I know use 10gbe or fiber and external RAIDS, not internal storage, at least in the corporate world. Even 8tb is not enough for a a lot of video projects, and what then?
Again, this is a dropbox issue and a problem which dropbox needs to solve. Google Drive has solved it.
I appreciate people trying to detail possible workarounds as I know people's hearts are in the right places, but let's be real about those solutions. They are not real workable solutions. Dropbox and any usable cloud service MUST support moving of directories to external drives. That's a full on absolute requirement.
..and again, Dropbox is doing a major disservice to us by marking this thread as "solved" when it is decidedly NOT.
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.
