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Jon C.10's avatar
Jon C.10
Collaborator | Level 8
2 years ago

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...
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  • BenDBX's avatar
    BenDBX
    4 months ago
    Hi 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!
KzDbx's avatar
KzDbx
Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager

Hello 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.

sootysax's avatar
sootysax
Explorer | Level 3
2 years ago

To solve this problem, is it possible to move your Mac 'User' folder to an external drive, instead of your root drive.   I have done this back in the day with my old Mac Pro 2010 when I bought SSD's for the boot drive, I put the User folder on a 3TB HHD.

  • jmeredi2's avatar
    jmeredi2
    Helpful | Level 6
    2 years ago

    I just tried moving my user folder to my external 40TB RAID drive, and so far it's working. This is a desktop computer, so if you're on a laptop you'd have to have an alternate account when logging in with the hard drive disconnected. It's working so far, but my DropBox hasn't yet been updated to the new version, so I can't say for sure it will continue working once the switchover happens in the coming months. Has anyone else, who has already been upgraded to the new DropBox, tried this method?

    • millifoo's avatar
      millifoo
      Helpful | Level 7
      2 years ago
      It’ll technically work, but unless you have a beefy Thunderbolt SSD, you’re paying a performance penalty for for living on a spinning-rust hard drive again.
      • jmeredi2's avatar
        jmeredi2
        Helpful | Level 6
        2 years ago

        Definitely not a perfect solution, but might at least make our 30TB DropBox usable, even if speed is impacted. Just hoping, like everyone else, that DB will come up with something better.

  • psalcal's avatar
    psalcal
    Collaborator | Level 10
    2 years ago

    Moving your entire user account to an external drive is a bad idea.  Consider laptops.  How is that going to work?  

     

    That is NOT a real solution.  I appreciate the thought.  

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