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Forum Discussion
Failing to download a large file using Dropbox plus and also browser
I've been sent a large file by a client, 64gb binary, and initially tried downloading using two different machines on Chrome and Edge browsers. It takes a hour or so, gets abouy halfway through and then fails. As an alternative, I shared it to my own Dropbox plus account which has over 1TB free which seemed to work but won't let me copy to a local file, see error message below. It also comes up with notification messages that I don't have enough hard disk space, although I've 125gb available on my C: drive and a further 6TB on the drive I trying to copy the file to.
So a couple of hours later after the sync completed, even though the tray icon said 'up to date all the time'. Copy and paste worked after this and I finally have my file a couple of days later after six failed attempts. My thoughts on this;
- If there is a maximum file download size from the web client, the software should say this rather than wasting a couple of hours on an attempt that is always going to fail.
- Where a file is partially downloaded from the web client, there should be an opportunity to resume rather than start from scratch and waste more of your users time.
- Where the desktop app is being used to download very big files that need syncing first, it should say it is syncing on-screen before starting to process the transfer to another local folder. Simply issuing a 0x80070780 error and leaving the user to figure out what went wrong is in my opinion a rather nasty bug. Having read other posts about 0x80070780 errors, there seems to be an idea put forward that this is an issue with the operating system rather than the dropbox software, I'd suggest that this is misleading and the problem lies with dropbox not dealing with inevitable time-outs.
- The sync icon status only appears to operate in terms of local PC to host and not the reverse.
Personally, I found the entire experience of using dropbox for the task of receiving large client files frustrating and counter intuitive and will suggest my clients look at alternative solutions going forward.
Moved the main Dropbox folder to the D: drive and am now trying to copy my big file from there to the C: drive which is not reporting any errors as yet. Update, same error about 20 minutes and 0% into the download. Very frustrating, going to see if I can get my user to FTP it instead.
Ok, looks like a syncing issue. If I right click on the file in the dropbox folder, select copy, go to my local folder and select paste I get an error 0x80070780: The file cannot be accessed by the system. If I open the dropbox application, on the bottom of the screen it tells me it is syncing the file and will be ready in an hour. It looks very much like dropbox has caused a timeout to happen on the Windows side of the transfer as it can't supply the non-local data yet. I tested this on a smaller 1gb file and got the same behaviour which resolved itself after the sync was finished so will try my big file again in a couple of hours.
So a couple of hours later after the sync completed, even though the tray icon said 'up to date all the time'. Copy and paste worked after this and I finally have my file a couple of days later after six failed attempts. My thoughts on this;
- If there is a maximum file download size from the web client, the software should say this rather than wasting a couple of hours on an attempt that is always going to fail.
- Where a file is partially downloaded from the web client, there should be an opportunity to resume rather than start from scratch and waste more of your users time.
- Where the desktop app is being used to download very big files that need syncing first, it should say it is syncing on-screen before starting to process the transfer to another local folder. Simply issuing a 0x80070780 error and leaving the user to figure out what went wrong is in my opinion a rather nasty bug. Having read other posts about 0x80070780 errors, there seems to be an idea put forward that this is an issue with the operating system rather than the dropbox software, I'd suggest that this is misleading and the problem lies with dropbox not dealing with inevitable time-outs.
- The sync icon status only appears to operate in terms of local PC to host and not the reverse.
Personally, I found the entire experience of using dropbox for the task of receiving large client files frustrating and counter intuitive and will suggest my clients look at alternative solutions going forward.
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