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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.
KzDbx
Where did you get the information that DropBox would not be upgrading customers who have their files stored on an external drive? According to people I’ve spoken to at DropBox, and everything I find online, this upgrade will happen for everyone in the next couple months, regardless of storage size or location. Do you have documentation to back up what you’re claiming?
Where did you get the information that DropBox would not be upgrading customers who have their files stored on an external drive? According to people I’ve spoken to at DropBox, and everything I find online, this upgrade will happen for everyone in the next couple months, regardless of storage size or location. Do you have documentation to back up what you’re claiming?
- There are other providers who have solved this by allowing separate non-cloud sync of local data, even on external drives.
https://www.sync.com/help/moving-your-sync-folder-to-a-new-location/- Ok this is looking more and more like I’m going to need to end my relationship with Dropbox. I’m going to have to do a deep dive into other options. I think Box, google drive are likely not options based on my previous experience. Does anyone have other advice in services which allow external drive sync and are suitable for audio and video work? Thank you in advance.
Hey jmeredi2
Dropbox dropped this comment in this support thread on 17 February.
Here's a screenshot I took of it.
Best,
TDK :bat:Hey everyone. I just had a chat with dropbox tech support. They are reporting they have ZERO plans to support external drives going forward on the Mac. None. There is NO path forward for us, according to tech support. That is their official position.
May I suggest we use this thread to discuss alternative options?
EDIT: Bad move Dropbox to move this into a thread, to bury it. UGH. Very bad move.
What I know now:
Google Drive DOES currently have a way of using external drives. It involves running a script in Terminal, but I'm using it for work and it DOES work. I don't love Google Drive though for my own personal use, it's always been less reliable than Dropbox and slower.iCloud Drive: probably doesn't support external drives, AND it is not set up for similar use. It doesn't appear to always download and keep a directory "fresh" and complete when it's changed by others.
Box.com: Confirmed no support for external drives.
iSync: I have a question in to them.
Are there any other cloud services I should be considering? Thank you...
Anyone have experience with sync.com doing audio and video work?Currently looking into sync.com, lacks contextual menus, but does allow for installation to external drive. Google drive is not great and iCloud is buggy and Ive lost data using it.
- The Dark Night, They sent that same reply to me only a couple of days ago. I’m sure they will come with a solution. If not there will be others like FileZilla, Cyber Duck, Mountain Duck.
We could be heading for 100 TB of storage, we only need 10TB at a time, but the headroom is essential.
Speed is not a factor, for steady media steaming. Local storage makes absolutely no sense to us.- I've been trying out MountainDuck the last couple weeks, and it's working ok, albeit I've gotten a couple (well, a few dozen out of millions of files) errors while trying to sync.The biggest pain is that I have to re-download everything -- can't seem to get mountainduck to recognize the existing TB of data already local.
