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.

[fjazzfjazz]

Not so simple. Those of us that need file sharing and have big teams and multiple clients, we can't expect everyone to have a 4TB internal harddrive. External drives were, are, and will always be a must to the media industry. 

[UKD]

@pollen exactly like that except this is the backbone of the application which makes it even worse that they’ve communicated so little.

They seem to have concentrated on so many ‘new and exciting features’ over the years that they forgot to notice this massive change apparently. And now their customers are going to pay for this, both figuratively and in actuality. Does anybody use paper or sign? The best feature they brought out I thought was send. The rest I don’t personally or the staff use. We have better individual specific tools for those other features.

@shinbeth you seem to be missing the point. This isn’t about plans. This is about the fact that Dropbox built its business on the back of media companies, those of us that have large files. Now it seems that us media companies (using media very loosely here) can just suck this change up. It’s not as simple as that. I don’t want to keep localising and de-localising folders all day long. That’s time lost and lost time = lost revenue. Multiply that by the number of staff you may have and that adds up. Who is going to pay for that lost time. I have a specific set of large folders that are always localised. These are my regular and super large folders that are always in use every week. Now imagine I have a 512GB hard drive and my go to folder is 200GB, what do I do? Sync that locally every time I get a job in an then make it offline only afterwards? Ridiculous. If you have an M chip Mac and you only bought a 1TB drive you’re now screwed if you operate in a similar vein as described above. Even older macs are unupgradeable because of Apples desire to keep customers from upgrading their machines themselves.

It’s also not so simple when you have large dropboxes. I am on Business Teams Pro plan or whatever it is and my Dropbox is over 40TB. Nobody makes a 40TB internal drive and who in their right mind would want an internal drive that large anyway. For us larger users the cost of $ to MB is very good value with Dropbox. Google not so much. This is why this is going to be a painful breakup but one that is necessary for my and probably many other businesses. Sadly Dropbox will only do something after there is a mass exodus or maybe they already are working on a fix. Who knows? Nobody, because they don’t communicate. So some of us just can’t risk it, so are moving elsewhere to mitigate that risk.

[shinbeth]

@UKD 

I get your point, thanks for the detailed explanation. The fact that Dropbox is unable to meet Apple's specs speaks volume about the rigidity of both organizations. Tech companies are supposed to be agile and flexible. Except when they're in a position of monopoly like Apple and Dropbox. Which seems to be the case since 10 years ago, and that's why they struggle to be most efficient to deal with this kind of user issues. I guess the tech bubble burst didn't help either and probably a lot of product dev got fired and this issue became the least of their concern. And here we are now, in total shambles.

That said, and I agree it's a slightly different topic, but they should increase the size limit too asap. 3TB is way too small nowadays I think you'll agree to this. Especially since like I said Google Drive + competition offer 10-30TB. That would solve my issue, not yours though, I get that. Hopefully both our issues will be solved. Fingers crossed.

[ArthurPix]

@UKD Except that Drobox isn't a monopoly.

This guinea pig has now switched all Dropbox folders over to Sync.com, taken Drop-the-box off my Mac, and so far it's working beautifully on my Mac, and a bit less so on my iPhone and iPad, where the iOS apps are a bit slower at updating all my folders. This is to be expected, since the Mac  files are all offline as well, and the iDevice apps are  strictly online-only. So for the moment I'm doing all my email on my computer, but I'm hoping that by tomorrow, the apps will be through theurbprocessing things and up-to-date.

[ArthurPix]

@UKD P.S. It looks like I get double the storage space for my money on Sync. Paying the same $240 per year gets me 6T instead of the 3T I get on Dropbox.

[ArthurPix]

@UKD Correction to my earlier email, where I reported that my Sync iOS apps hadn’t yet digested all my Terabyte+ worth of Dropbox data. Right after posting about this, I opened my iPad app for Sync and —tada!—the migration was complete and all my folders were 100% operational. Better still, the folders weren’t a jumbled mess, but laid out alphabetically, just as they are offline on my external disk, with PDF files identified by an appropriate icon, ditto for Word and Pages files. My next step will be to activate two-factor login, and then I’ll be sitting pretty.

[ArthurPix]

@shinbeth Sync.com gives you 6T for the same $240 per year. Just observing.

[ArthurPix]

@UKD My entire Dropbox is just under 2T, so it wasn’t too big of a deal to switch over. It took Sync.com under an hour to digest it on my computer, and the iOS apps needed about 24-36 hours. Given the size of your own requirements, I’d say you are wise to take a gradual approach. If you do it in 2T-a-day increments, you should be in good shape.

[ArthurPix]

@fjazzfjazz @UKD @shinbeth To answer your question, if Dropbox solves the problem before May, I might very well return, if only because it’s the de facto industry standard for folder sharing— plus they allow me to back up my entire account on Synology. I don’t plan on closing my Dropbox account for this reason, although I may downsize it.

So, far, however, I’m finding Sync.com perfectly well adapted to my other needs — and their REAL end-to-end encryption makes my sensitive data more secure. So I’ll have to see when the ensuing month brings us.

[UKD]

@ArthurPix @fjazzfjazz @shinbeth I don't think I'll go back sadly. I will keep my personal account with them just for sheer convenience and because it's nowhere near as big as my business one but their whole attitude on this has left a nasty taste in my mouth.

If sync.com is just as good and I don't have the constant sucking up of CPU and RAM too from their app then to me it's good to go. My main requests are team sharing facility, being able to use an external drive and the ability to share externally. It seems sync.com has all this for $15 per user per month. Dropbox has increased to $24 per user per month now. So with 9 people I'll be saving just under $1K USD per year.

I am all paid up until September so I shall be keeping it until then but just not renewing.