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Jon C.10's avatar
Jon C.10
Collaborator | Level 8
2 years ago

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...
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  • BenDBX's avatar
    BenDBX
    4 months ago
    Hi Everybody,
     
    We’re excited to share that external drive support for Dropbox for macOS on File Provider is now available for testing as a beta feature. This is available to some users today and will be available to additional users on a rolling basis. In order to be eligible to test this feature, please follow the instructions in this Help Center article. 
     
    Keep in mind that participation in beta programs is subject to the certain terms and conditions. There are certain additional participation requirements:
    • This beta is only available to US-based users
    • You must be on macOS 15 beta
    • You must have an external drive that is APFS formatted and encrypted
     
    Please let me know if you have any further questions!
dandid's avatar
dandid
Helpful | Level 6

fjazzfjazz yes exactly this, the usecase for most people this changes doesn't cause any issues, for anyone with soem large files it's a real problem. one thing I'm not sure about, is this a mac only issue? as I have a PC sat right here next to me, can I just let that 'be drop box' do it all as it currently is? I use a lot of files from the PC anyway, redners and other video file content and the file speed is fine for me with a cat 5 cable straight between is and my mac. 

ms25's avatar
ms25
Helpful | Level 7
2 years ago

dandid I recommend NOT sharing your Dropbox folder via Windows Sharing / SMB. I set this up myself, and after using it to add files for the first time had an unexpected mass deletion of files. My clients and I had to restore around 30,000 files. Thankfully, nothing was lost. Apparently everyone's local files were deleted instantly, and then it took however long for machines to re-sync over whatever connections they had at the time. It's not something I want to do again. I had two tickets with Dropbox support, one via email and another via chat (email support is like one exchange per day, and I was impatient.) Chat support told me SMB sharing is not supported. Email support didn't indicate as much, and thought maybe I had a drive error. Either way, it was a real PITA and did not make me look so great with my clients.

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