When I check my storage, what does "other hard drive space used" mean?

[jdailey]

What does this even mean? It's telling me I've used nearly 1.5 tb when I only have 10gb in my folder?

[Rich]

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@jdailey wrote:

What does this even mean? It's telling me I've used nearly 1.5 tb when I only have 10gb in my folder?

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Where are you seeing this? Is it referring to space on your local hard drive or your usage in your Dropbox account? If it's the space in your account, look at your Plan page for a breakdown of your usage. What does it say is using the space; regular files, shared, backup, etc.?

[spokes2]

RMB on systray icon, LMB on profile picture, "Manage hard drive space".

I comes up with a nice bar graph that sort of matches the sizes from RMB/properties on DropBox folder in file explorer ( Size: 462GB  Size on disk: 125 GB ), does this imply some slight compression? (I have no files "online only")

[Rich]

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@spokes2 wrote:

DropBox folder in file explorer ( Size: 462GB  Size on disk: 125 GB ), does this imply some slight compression? (I have no files "online only")

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With that big of a size difference, I'd suspect that you have some files or folders marked as online-only. It's common to see some size difference between the two (depending on several different factors not related to Dropbox), but that large of a difference, and with the size on disk being smaller, I'd bet you have files or folders marked as online-only somewhere in your Dropbox.

[spokes2]

I used to have some folders un-synced but checked all today (larger ssd) now all files show up in local drive. If I un-sync a buried folder the top level folder changed from a check to a dash.

[Rich]

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@spokes2 wrote:

I used to have some folders un-synced but checked all today (larger ssd) now all files show up in local drive.

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That's Selective Sync, used to completely remove a folder from your local drive, and not the Online-only feature. In fact, if you had any folders unchecked on that window and then checked them, they would sync to your computer as online-only, not taking up disk space.

To make sure all of your files are available offline, check the status icons and make sure they have a solid green circle with a white check mark on them. If they have a cloud symbol they're online-only. If they have a hollow green circle then they're online-only but were recently opened and synced.

Right-click on any file or folder (or many files/folders at once) and select Make available offline. You'll need to give it time for everything to sync. With that large of a difference, it will take some time.

[spokes2]

RMB on DropBox folder in File explorer, there's a new set of DropBox icon commands in the pop-up menu, one is "Make available offline". Now some up/down loads happening. This must override the other syncing checkbox interface.

[Rich]

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@spokes2 wrote:

This must override the other syncing checkbox interface.

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You're confusing two different features that are similar, but unrelated.