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.

[collideent]

I hope you will solve this problem soon. This would be a deal breaker for me and my business and I'd need to cancel my pro account. 

[tillkrueger]

While Dropbox works on making external drive support official, as KzDbx kindly informed us about, I'd like to share an insight that was given to me by one of Dropbox Germany's support agents, Stephanie, who I asked for help with a concern I had regarding moving my Dropbox folder to an external drive, and not wanting to have to download all files again.

The solution she gave me seems to also be relevant to all those of us who already have all of our files on external storage and want to keep it that way...I re-wrote her instructions to hopefully be more clear:

• Quit the Dropbox client
• Download the newest client from http://dropbox.com/downloading
• When installing it, it may have the option "All Files Offline" greyed out (not enough disk space), so continue with "All files Online"
In the next step, choose "Advanced Options" and point the location of the Dropbox folder at your current location (the root of which your Dropbox folder resides in, not the Dropbox folder itself!)
• Dropbox will start and re-index all of your files, without downloading them again, which could take a while, depending on the number of files in your Dropbox

Once finished, your Dropbox folder will be on your external storage and, according to KzDbx, remain there until Dropbox finds an official solution.

Now stop threatening Dropbox with cancelling your subscriptions...they are obviously aware of how important this issue is, and can't afford to fall behind other cloud storage providers who are supporting external storage already!

Thanks KzDbx for letting us know, and please ask your overlords to do a better job communicating your progress to us foot-soldiers.

[G-Tech]

I agree, this is an absolute disaster. I also raised this question with the Dropbox support today and they told me that even existing setups with external hard drives will be migrated to the internal drive by May 2023 at the latest. This will be a show stopper for our business.

We are considering setting up an emergency backup solution based on an old fashioned local file server. However, I have learned that Apple has also removed AFP support and now forces people to use Apple's extremely buggy SMB implementation, that causes many issues especially with Adobe software and messes up access privileges all the time.

What a mess. We are in 2023, have had a working cloud solution for years, and now, we are back in the 90's.

The known issue introduced in macOS 12.3 and regarding access to online-only files from 3rd party apps, is a disadvantage, but it can be eluded if you have a large external drive and make all the data needed available offline.

Really, I don't know what to say. This also goes to Apple who thinks it needs to lock down Macs just like their iPads. iPads can hardly be used for productive purposes because of the massive limitations in iPad OS. Now, it seems Apple tries to do the same to MacOS. These are no good prospects. Not at all.

[workmanlike]

I am very curious what solution dropbox will offer. With  over 300+ TB data on dropbox, it's quite important feature for us. 

[shinbeth]

@tillkrueger 

"Now stop threatening Dropbox with cancelling your subscriptions..."

who are you to give us orders?

"they are obviously aware of how important this issue is, and can't afford to fall behind other cloud storage providers who are supporting external storage already!"

no they're not, and they've been falling behind on many things sadly (plans, now this)

hopefully you're a dropbox employee in disguise but either way your 'solution' doesn't feel very safe

[tillkrueger]

@shinbeth 

I should have put a " 😉 " after "now stop and"...I am sorry if it offended you, truly, but it wasn't meant as an order, but as a friendly suggestion...should have known that all humor has left this discussion a while ago.

...and no, I am not a Db employee...just trying to be of service and relaying to the community what worked for me...I just did the same thing on my Mac Mini M1 file server, and pointed Dropbox at my external 2TB SSD that holds the entirety of my Dropbox, and after indexing the folder, all is well...but you obviously see me as the enemy here, so take it or leave it and keep being angry.

[ehcropydoc]

We have 45TB uploaded to Dropbox and utilize our main DB folder on an external RAID volume in our 2019 Mac Pro (32TB Pegasus R4i) - this change will have drastic effects for our company.

As a precaution, we have opted to sync all files to online-only until a solution is developed.

(BTW: We recently uploaded 20TB to the DB cloud. Upload took 3 days. However, the online-only sync took about 3 weeks to process completely. So CAUTION to those trying to sync TB's of data "off" their drives via the Online-Only process.

[shinbeth]

@tillkrueger 

Yes you should have.

Why make things complicated? Just get a large internal SSD drive (eg. 8TB) instead of having to back a ridiculously low 2TB external hard drive and try to sync it with Dropbox LOL

Why are you/Dropbox making things so complicated when they shouldn't.

[Jamesgangcc]

Why spend more money if you don't have to? Oh, right. The American way.  The whole point of this cloud business is so you DON"T have to buy a huge internal, right? Isn't that why they make the computers smaller? Because you supposedly don't need the internal? Asterisk? Footnote? Hurdle? Hoop? I thought the cloud was to make it less complicated. You know, like self check out lanes. Ha. 

[Jamesgangcc]

I have everything synced to online only, about 800 gb. I created an iMovie library just yesterday before reading all about this to save movies "to the cloud." I'm downloading everything in the Dropbox to a 2TB and I plan on ditching Dropbox. I have 1TB on OneDrive (though I hate their interface) and 200GB right now with Apple. I'm going to look into Googly and maybe use them vs. Dropbox. This is just the "last straw." I hated when they made changes a few years ago to where you needed a road map to "just simply" share or download something. I get the constant "upgrade," "check out the new way we've added tons of steps to do something simple," and "sync your synched sharing by sharing with your colleagues that you may not have but have to use" system. Yes or Okay? Done paying people to sit around in meetings coming up with ways to make things more difficult.