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desmond_singh's avatar
desmond_singh
New member | Level 2
4 years ago

Trying to save files directly on Dropbox (not on hard drive), but they still save on Hard-Disk Drive

Hi All,   Let me start by saying I'm brand new to dropbox, so I apologize if my concerns are low-level and I thank you for your patience in advanced.   Here are my details:   I'm a Bioinf...
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  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    4 years ago
    desmond_singh wrote:

    I'm wondering how I can make it such that when I run the BASH script, the 22 unzipped files and the large, concatenated file are automatically saved onto the dropbox application and NOT my HDD.

    You can't. That's not how Dropbox works. It's not a cloud-based folder. It's a regular folder on your local hard drive like any other, and anything stored in the folder takes up space on the drive. Files saved in the folders are synced to your account online. It's not possible to save directly to the cloud, bypassing your local drive.

Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
desmond_singh wrote:

I'm wondering how I can make it such that when I run the BASH script, the 22 unzipped files and the large, concatenated file are automatically saved onto the dropbox application and NOT my HDD.

You can't. That's not how Dropbox works. It's not a cloud-based folder. It's a regular folder on your local hard drive like any other, and anything stored in the folder takes up space on the drive. Files saved in the folders are synced to your account online. It's not possible to save directly to the cloud, bypassing your local drive.

izzi-e's avatar
izzi-e
New member | Level 2
4 years ago

There is a smart sync option in settings that allows you to save files as an online-only file, that doesn't take up space on your hard-drive. However, once you need to view it again, I believe it will download and become a local file that does take up space. I'm not sure if there's a way to bypass having to download the file on top your hard drive first before uploading it as an online-only folder, but if you have enough space initially, this could be a good option. If you only need to store the large files in Dropbox, then it does work as a cloud based folder. 

 

Here's a link for the Smart Sync feature help:

https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/smart-sync 

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