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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...
UKD Ru 1971 shinbeth camner So… today I canceled my Dropbox auto renewal.
I’m already paid up through mid-November 2023, so this doesn’t mean I’m dropping 😎 off the map — at least not for the next six months — but I’ve moved all supported folders to my new service, and am now no longer fearful of having my online storage pulled off my external drive.
I MIGHT come back if Dropbox commits to external drive support. But honestly, I can’t see much advantage to doing so. Here are my priorities:
SPEED. My new service is approximately as fast as Dropbox or, anyhow, as fast as I need.
SECURITY. My new service has REAL end-to-end, TNO (trust no one) encryption, meaning their engineers couldn’t hand anyone else the keys even if they wanted to.
2-FACTOR. It supports 2-factor authentication via Google, MS or Authy.
SHARING. It offers free accounts up to 5 GB, which is big enough for pretty much anyone outside the service with whom I want to share data.
S-P-A-C-E. For the same price I’m paying Dropbox for 3 Terabytes of storage, I now get 6 Tb.
Again, I haven’t totally pulled the plug on Dropbox. I’m still paid up for the next six months, and will periodically bring my Dropbox up to date just so that I have a safety net. However, I doubt I’ll need it.
I’ve already switched over my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro, and will switch my desktop Mac Studio in another week.
Water’s fine!
And, of course, I’m staying here in the Dropbox community to help out anyone who asks!
I am testing out Sync now as well and it seems to work great, except for the speed. Uploading and downloading is capped at 40Mbps, which is especially slow for downloading. It still seems to be the best alternative, but I hope they will increase the speed cap in the future, since it's very slow for everyday use with large files.
jmeredi2 zI certainly understand your concern about the speed. I fear that true end to end encryption may exact a price in file mirroring. For me it’s more than worth it, because my main use case is sharing data among my own 5 different, equally used, devices, which doesn’t require lightning speed. Every few days, I may also need to share data with coworkers, which also can take place at a more leisurely pace. But my main concern is that I want everyone in my business to be able to share data while backing it up offline, WITHOUT paying thousands of dollars for offline storage. And this can only happen when my storage service allows for offline storage on external devices. Unfortunately, Apple sells internal storage at $400/terabyte, while Samsung (for example) will sell you an SSD for about $130/2 Terabytes plus the nominal cost of an enclosure. When I buy my partner an M2 Mac Mini Pro with 512GB internal SSD, I want her to be able to add 6T of storage for $400 instead of $2400!
