Disaster: Dropbox removing external disk support for Mac users :(

[Jon C.10]

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-an-external-drive-and-onedrive...

https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected-changes

Just confirmed this with DB support (see below).  Gutted - been with Dropbox for years and our entire video team flow is based around it 😕

>Hi there, I read today that you are scrapping the ability to store the Dropbox folder on external disks, on OSX. I'd like to ask more about this please.

> Hello Jon, and thank you for contacting Dropbox Support. My name is Joseph, and I will be more than happy to look into your request, right away.  

That is correct Jon, as part of the Dropbox for macOS update, the Dropbox folder must be located in ~/Library/CloudStorage.

>This is a showstopper for us, and will mean we have to move to another service. We have a large distributed team using DB for video work, no way it'll fit within internal drives.
Is there a workaround?

> I totally understand and I apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, there is no workaround on this as changing the location of your Dropbox folder is no longer supported by macOS.

>This change doesn't seem to have hit us yet - we're running a variety of machines inc Ventura
What will trigger its enforcement? Can we stay on an earlier OS or Dropbox version?

>The updates happening automatically every time the Dropbox app is restarting, for example if your device never restarts it should maintain the older version but we can't guarantee full functionality on older versions of the application.

>So what will happen - if we have a Dropbox folder on an 8TB drive and a tiny internal drive - will it try to clone stuff across and eat up the space? What's the mechanism?

>That's right, it will try to move the content on your internal drive until it has no space and gives you an error.

>Is Smartsync still supported? I.e. will it move stuff to being online only if it won't fit?

>It is, however it is now known as online-only.

[sootysax]

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.

[psalcal]

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.  

[psalcal]

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.  

[sootysax]

I am also having this problem with Google Drive!   How has Google Drive solved this?  

[psalcal]

Elsewhere in the thread, I have a link to the fix from google themselves. I don't have the link handy, but it's fixable.  

[pampy]

Where can we find that "We will keep you updated" we need hourly updates!

[euiow]

https://support.google.com/drive/thread/159983654?hl=en&msgid=162498347

You mean this?

[shinbeth]

@psalcal 

"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."

Absolutely not for professionals with high-speed contents such as heavy 8k files, Kontakt librairies and so on, external SSDs as of today are not as fast as internal SSDs built my Apple (they are 'expensive' for a reason). It's a total issue. For instance Sandisk v2 Pros (2/sec) will load Kontakt librairies faster than older optical drives but still not as as fast as the latest Apple technology provides with internal SSDs (anyone could understand why). Same goes with Ableton Live which indexes all your librairies samples etc. if you don't use the fastest internal SSDs it will somewhat introduce a slightl latency from time to time (when searching 8TB of data in my case) which is annoying enough for me and slowing down my process and creativity so it's a no go. And the fact that you have to search through different devices is creating confusion. Perhaps you have too little data or work on the amateur side of this business and that's no issue for you. But for people who make money out of it we don't have time for such inconvenience.

Relying on external drives is rubbish:

1. because your data isn't stored in a single place, it makes it difficult to search in a single unit (out of question for me)

2. even external SSDs aren't 100% reliable as something could break (the cable, the USB part, or get stolen etc.) so it makes much more sense to centralize everything on a single internal SSD (and fastest one) and then back this one single data storage with an equally large external SSD for TimeMachine (or two of them, even better, which you can alternate every day for maximum safety - keeping one hidden in your house and one with you on your keyring), plus of course cloud service > Dropbox as another layer of real-time backup

3. it doesn't make sense to share company content from various external disks and sync it to a cloud, unless it's a high-level Enterprise plan level (thus Dropbox offering unlimited capacity at this level) that none of you here use, since large companies have their own data management system already and this requires an investment that is not necessary when already having enough space locally.

"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?  "

8TB is enough for me now and soon Apple will start releasing 16TB etc. on their MBP and Pro lines which will be more than enough for my lifetime.

Raids are absolutely not an option again they start introducing latency and it's quite sketchy to start relying on cloud storage for such complex systems. They're not so easy to set up and maintain by the way, I've been into this - except again if you go Enterprise level which is not my case and not the case of 99% users in this discussion. So I prefer to keep things the simplest with local data and the fastest internal SSD drive.

"Again, this is a dropbox issue and a problem which dropbox needs to solve.  Google Drive has solved it."

When this thread started I was compassionate with you guys but now I tend to think Dropbox is doing the right thing. It needs to stop offering ridiculous external storage sync (so unreliable, how can you guys trust this) and start FINALLY offering more storage in the Pro plans so that we can sync our local data conveniently. Pro Dropbox users are neither Basic users with ridiculously low needs and neither Enterprise users with ridiculously high needs (such as 1000TB needs and Entreprise level architecture).

And by the way Google Drive sucks unfortunately, if G Drive was as good as Dropbox I would have left Dropbox already for G Drive, since they offer 30TB for a very cheap amount of money. Unfortunately, only Dropbox provides such a perfect real-time indexing and cloud service without any limitations (except that stupid 3TB plan limitation but that's a different type of issue).

We Pro users need 10 to 20/30TB Dropbox plans and by the way DO NOT want to migrate to Business/Enterprise plans with 3/5/10 mandatory users. Just a single user I work alone and if I need to share things with others I simply use the sharing options/folders which are totally fine as they are today.

"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."

The only hard requirement for me is Dropbox finally getting in the 21st century and stop offering only 3TB (+1TB only extra) Pro plans, which feels pretty much like what we needed 10 years ago considering our computers, drive and contents.

..and again, Dropbox is doing a major disservice to us by marking this thread as "solved" when it is decidedly NOT.  

[shinbeth]

Bonus: this benchmark written in december 2022 comparing differents SSD Raid speeds (APFS) they cannot exceed 1'800-2'200mbps in write/read (at the very best...)

https://larryjordan.com/articles/compare-speed-differences-between-2-3-and-4-drive-ssd-raids/

And also consider that Thunderbolt (as of today v3/v4) has its own limitations too so until Thunderbolt v5 sees the light of day I still maintain external drives as not being an option for professionals in need of high-speed transfers equivalent to those provided by internal SSDs on the likes of Apple M1/M3 (forget the M2 its crap, they had to slow down the internal SSD speed by 15-25%).

https://larryjordan.com/articles/thunderbolt-may-not-be-as-fast-as-you-think/

[Ru 1971]

@shinbeth  Why do you keep posting about Raids & SSD speeds, & how you like huge internal drives?

This has nothing whatsoever about what is being discussed, which is about Dropbox removing external drive support. 

Any drive *other* than the boot drive is now classed as an 'external drive', even if its in fact Internally fitted on a Mac Pro

This is something many of us rely on. If that's not you,  kindly leave this thread to those of us who wish to keep this feature.

Please help keep this thread on track.