Dropbox on Linux: Selecting alternate Drive for Location

[MarkJelic]

Long time user of OneDrive on Windows but moving to Linux Mint, and with no support for OneDrive on Linux, I have once again taken up a subscription to the Dropbox service. Glad they are reading the market's distrust of Windows 11!

So installed Dropbox on Windows and that's working fine as always, but moving to Linux Mint with dual booting for now. On Windows I have selected where I wanted the local storage folder to reside on a drive other than the System C: drive, but this seems to be missing from Linux. I installed the Flatpak version 204.4.5420 and at the suggestion of another help site also installed Flatseal and gave Dropbox access to all options available in the Filesystem section, including specifically "/media". Yet I seem only to be able to select a folder under /home/username. I have access to all the drives on the computer (including a Windows drive, the Data drive where Dropbox data is, etc) but I can't make Dropbox on Linux see any drive.

What I would like to be able to do is have one drive that has the Dropbox folder that both Windows and Linux access. This would save on hard disk space, and the few days it's going to take to sync the files to the Linux folder.  Even if Windows wasn't a consideration, I'd still prefer to have my Dropbox data on a separate Data drive like I have always had, more for disk space management and backup processes than anything.

Anyone had any success in choosing an alternate folder location on Linux?

[Здравко]

Hi @MarkJelic,

It was possible before (years). Dropbox decided to limit file systems where Dropbox folder may reside on and so there are different FS sets for Windows, Linux, and Mac. That's way Dropbox folder cannot be shared. If it is installed on Windows, it resides on NTFS - something Dropbox doesn't allow on Linux (despite Linux itself support NTFS). The opposite (initial instal on Linux and then trying on Windows) would be the same story. 😕 Despite it was possible, now Dropbox doesn't allow sharing Dropbox folder on double boot systems, don't loose your time trying. Otherwise on Linux can be selected differen Dropbox folder location, including different drive, as far as FS there is Dropbox supported (the same when you move Dropbox folder on Windows - try move from NTFS drive to, let's say FAT drive - is it possible😉).

Hope this clarifies matter.