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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...
Hey everyone,
I can tell you that I wish this problem had never come about with the issues of having to use the primary drive. I would love to be a good and paying member of dropbox like I used to be.
And no, today I will not go further into my thoughts of the past.
I am looking up and looking forward. When I left a couple of months ago, I went to sync dot con. At first I thought I would like it. But their customer service is so bad it wasn't even funny. I would write a message and wait two or more days to get a very low level tech to ask me stupid questions and then I would wait three or four more days and still not hear back from them or from a high-level tech.
After a couple of months of dealing with this I decided that it was time to move on. So I started experimenting with other options.
What I found much to my surprise and happiness was pcloud dot calm. They are only a few dollars more however there's one big thing that they do that won me over. They do not throttle the speed at all. You can get all of the upload and download speed that your ISP gives you. At least that's in theory but I have found it is really fast. Even faster than what dropbox was.
There is a bit of a trade off. Sync dot con was fully encrypted. Now the good news is that makes it a very safe option. The bad news is that it makes uploading and downloading nearly impossible if you have much that you're trying to deal with. I got errors constantly. After a week of trying to upload 400 GB, I finally gave up.
Pcloud dot calm is unencrypted unless you really want encryption. Now if you buy a business plan like I did with three people, it comes with encryption. If you buy a lower level personal plan you have to pay extra for it. The good news is that it is a separate folder where you can put the things that are really important that you encrypt. The regular stuff you don't need to encrypt, don't. Things going into the encrypted folder or slow. Everywhere else is blinding fast with the service.
One more thing is that P cloud claims to be unlimited in terms of space. But if you look in their site or you ask them, they will say Unlimited in the business plan equals 2 TB per person and you need three. In our case, 6 TB is more than enough. You can remove storage from the other two and use it for central sharing and let the other people upload and download as they need. You can also ask for more when you reach about 90% of your allotted space.
I'm on a Mac and I'm just thrilled with the service.
Just some ideas that I'm sharing here.
TheMainOne Interesting. I'm still quite happy with Sync — whenever I've had a question for their techs, I've received a prompt answer, either same day or next day. However your complaint did strike a note in one sense, as there is no user community to whom I could submit problems. This is one aspect of DropBox that I really like.
Anyhow, after reading your comments, I checked out PC World's list of Best Cloud Services. I also checked the number of WorldWide Users for each platform. By far and away the most popular services are iCloud, with over 800 million users, and OneDrive, with about 500 million..
By contrast, the third party services are led by DropBox, with a staggering 700 million users. Sync.com says it has over 2 million "users and businesses," pCloud has 16 million users, and iDrive (which calls itself the world's most popular cloud service) has 4 million.
But who is the best? Well, PC Magazine hedges its bets, as you can see here: https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-cloud-storage-and-file-sharing-services
Note that "Best Overall" is oneDrive, which has the distinction of corrupting every single PDF, pages, docx, and jpeg to which I once entrusted it. Also, DropBox, truly the world's most popular cloud storage service is never even mentioned! Nor is pCloud. I have given iDrive a whirl—at its amazing introductory offer of $15.95 for a year of 5Tb of data --and is far HATE the UI, which requires me to DOWNLOAD any file I wish to view. More later...
I just set up my new MacMini M2, Dropbox installed the OLD version.
Now it bothers me to update to the new version, but it's not automatic, I have to click/approve it.
The question is if it will be mandatory soon. Apparently the option to transfer the DB folder is there.
I didn't transfer my Dropbox folder to my new external drive (it hasn't arrived) but I will try and post here.I don't believe iCloud can use an external drive either. Plus iCloud is not good for professional users. I'm pretty sure documents don't automatically download. You have to initiate it each time.
Oh bullcrap, they know it exists!
This video shows how it might work.. again I haven't tried this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdUc78AE2hM
Hi ArthurPix,
Half the time I think these publications rank things based on either nonsense or kickbacks. Although I have no evidence to prove any of it. But when I see things like you linked, I just have to shake my head.
Like I said as well, I really wish I could stay on dropbox. The fact is it just won't work for me anymore. Also I no longer trust them. But that's a story for another day.
I understand what you are saying about sync dot con. The problem for me is that their tech-support was absolutely useless. Dumb as rocks. So it didn't help me. I never could get about 400 GB uploaded. It's spewed errors and choked constantly. I later figured out that I had a file type that I didn't like. But at that point I was done.
And I do understand that pcloud is not the biggest. But it is blazing fast. At the same level as dropbox for me. And it competes with sync by allowing you to put up files that are encrypted in a special folder. And that's free at the business level. You pay more for it at the personal level. But I came to realize with all that I have been searching for, that I really don't need much of anything encrypted. So the few documents that I might want to encrypt I can. The rest of it I choose blinding fast speed.
I intend to continue to monitor this space. I really appreciate your thoughts on this. If any of us find anything of value, I hope we post here because it is really helpful.
I'll do the same.
Can icloud use the external drive?
So as far as I can see, anyone wanting Dropbox Synced to external volumes can be on Ventura and not use the new API. The Status Quo remains at least for now
What about Google Drive. Has anyone tried to use it with an external drive?
That is, I believe, correct, it still works for me on previous OS as long as you don't update Dropbox to latest version.
The version of Google Drive I have does no longer allow moving the content to an external drive, it now says "controlled by Mac OS".. there used to be a command line solution but I haven't tried that in a while. It used to work but I can't verify that it still does. I pointed to the command line solution earlier in this thread.
I just contacted GDrive customer service...they don't even know the problem exists...what a mess.
marcosdutra good question. I'll have to research this. I'm pretty sure you can put the entire boot drive on an external Disk, but am not sure if there's any solution short of that drastic step. I really wouldn't want to entrust my entire build to a striped RAID, which is what I do with my cloud storage, but I'll have to look into your question, marcosdutra .
