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Forum Discussion
How can I safely backup my music files from my old laptop to a new device?
Hello,
Hoping someone can explain something.
I have a laptop that I'm going to replace this year and have roughly 315GB of MP3 music that I'd like to back up.
If I were to put Dropbox on my cur...
Last question.
So all my Music MP3s are currently saved in my Music folder on my laptop and sync to my WMP.
How can I back these files up?
Will dragging the Music folder into Dropbox not move things around and create an issue? Will copy and paste not just mean I have two copies of every music file on my laptop and no space?
Sorry, still a bit confused.
Nancy
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi abitofhelpplease! Hope you don't mind if I chime in.
As for your first post, yes you’re correct; the only thing I’d like to mention is to make sure that all of your .mp3 files have been synced to your Dropbox account online before signing out/uninstalling the Dropbox app on your old machine.
You can do this by checking www.dropbox.com to make sure all of your files show there or by looking at your Dropbox app’s sync status on your old computer to make sure it’s up to date and no longer syncing (also, keep in mind that given the size of files you want to sync and depending on your internet connection, the syncing process may take a while so it's best to leave the device on till it's complete).
Regarding your second post, if you copy the files within the local Dropbox folder to sync them, then they should take up double the space from your hard drive indeed, but once they’ve been all uploaded to your Dropbox account and you’ve synced them to your new device, you can go ahead and delete them from the Music folder on your old device.
To sync your files, you’ll either need to copy or move them inside the Dropbox folder (your Dropbox account online automatically syncs what’s inside your Dropbox folder and not other folders on the computer). I wouldn't suggest moving the entire Music folder inside Dropbox; just the files that it contains.
Hope this clarifies things a bit. Feel free to nudge me, otherwise.
Thanks for the reply. I think that makes sense, looks like Dropbox might not be the one for me unfortunately.
Essentially what I'd like is a cloud storage that acts like a physical external hard drive. A place I can drag my Music files over to, store safely regardless of what happens with my laptop and restore when needed. When I do a restore I'd like to be able to simply drag over my Music file from storage and leave it for a few hours to transfer to my new device (without a limit on how much I can restore in one go).
Maybe what I'd like doesn't quite exist yet.
I don't like the idea of having to move all my files from the Music folder to back them up unfortunately.
