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.

[KyleKoch]

This is NOT SOLVED.

I just had a session if DB help via chat and the rep said it wasn’t anything to do with Dropbox, it had to do with the OS and that I could update without any worry. She repeated it several times.

Based on the info that was published; I’m still very concerned about suddenly not having Dropbox accessible on my 20TB external RAID. We have 16TB active currently. No OS can handle that.

[Brooknei]

Hi ... Not sure if this helps .... Windows NTFS can handle a 16TB partition if the cluster size is the default 4096 bytes.

After many, many years with Dropbox and partly because of this issue we have migrated over to Office 365 & Onedrive with better results.

[Dekaritae]

I'm going to try running Dropbox in a UTM native virtual machine stored on my external drive, and see how much of a performance hit that takes.

[wetcarson]

Just starting up a new thread because Dropbox marked the old one as SOLVED.

Continue making noise, this issue is NOT SOLVED.

[wetcarson]

LOL started a new thread and it was moved here. NOT SOLVED

[digisam]

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Continuing on from my earlier comment:

@digisam wrote:

And I do not believe for a second that such disruption and regression was unavoidable. Work it out, develop your own API or encryption, or do stuff behind the scenes that pushes stuff around, but do what it takes to not have to tell your customers what you are telling us now.

Yesterday when looking for alternatives I installed a self hosted option to see if that had any restrictions. 

I was able to put my "library" where I wanted, including an external drive.

Granted I had to give the application permission to use the location I wanted to use, but isn't that true of most applications?

If Dropbox can explain why they are simply holding up their hands and saying "We know it is a massive pain point for you, but we had no choice, Apple made us do it" then I would like to hear it. Until then I don't believe that statement is true, if anything it sounds like nonsense.

Every other application on my Mac can read and write to files anywhere on my laptop, internal, external as well as network drives. So why can't Dropbox?  

[DissatisfiedUser99]

Don't update.  Have been fighting a selective sync problem for the last 24 hours.  Only solution is so far is to make a 17G folder download only.  Deleted it 20 times, and it always came back.  Then it duplicated itself with two 17G folders.  What a mess.

[jmeredi2]

Has anyone tried using a symbolic link?

[psalcal]

@DissatisfiedUser99 my upgraded Mac laptop will not sync either.  SO FRUSTRATING!!!!!   

[millifoo]

@jmeredi2

Yes, tried: doesn’t work. This has been asked and answered in this thread a couple times now.