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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
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?
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.
- I tried them all and more… sadly no service comes as close as Dropbox (as of today). I know it’s hard to swallow but it’s the just the reality as it stands (for now though).
Dropbox will either adapt (not likely considering my experience with their tech and comms teams) or die in the long run by missing so much share of the market by refusing to adapt its technology and storage plans.
I feel like Dropbox as a company grew too fast too quick and then has been reaching a plateau since 2017/2018 when they no longer invested in quality people and further dev.
The shareholders must be happy though (for now): easy money keeps flowing every month, no need for costly dev and investments, low customer support. It’s a recipe for disaster though in the long run for any company in a competitive context.Found a temporary workaround.
After completely uninstalling dropbox and all associated files (I used the uninstaller on cleanmymacX), I was able to download and install the following version of dropbox.
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-desktop-client-builds/Stable-Build-167-4-4719/td-p/658295This version still allows (So far) use of external hard disks.
I'm on an intel mac mini, running Monterey, so ymmv on Silicon macs. (My M1 Macbook had not auto upgraded and broken dropbox.. yet)
Good luck!
We have been testing sync.com. I have about 1.5 TB of space on it now.
First the things I love… It is private. Really private. No nonsense like dropbox. Dropbox says they can read, give your content to trusted third parties and on and on. Not Sync.com. It is fully private.
The next thing I absolutely love is unlimited storage. Yes it really is true. Unlimited. We pay about $30 a month. Which is two seats at $15 a month each. Billed monthly, not yearly. And this gives us unlimited for both of us. It is a business plan and is exceptional because I want a lot of space.
Now the thing I don't love so much... It is rather slow. It is not as fast as dropbox. But it is fast enough. It took a couple of days to get the initial 1.5 TB online. But I don't have the fastest Internet either. That said, dropbox is faster. But this works plenty well for me
Buh bye dropbox and your woke nonsense.
Has anyone discredited using sym links with this new/upcoming change yet?
That's what I've doing for years and the system "sees" it as if it was all on the internal drive.
- 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.
"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."In my experience using MountainDuck really slows things down. These services slow things down and aren't as good as the native service they're linked to.And yes the re-downloading of 10TB+ of data is not an option, especially since it will be so slow vs. the native cloud service...
