You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Mac slows down on starting with paid Dropbox.
I have to wait on my macs (27" and two 13" Macbook, three and four years old, newest systems) almost 10 to 15 Minutes until i can use other apps, as dropbox syncs so slow the list. After list is load...
Dear Jane,
thanks for the informations!
I wonder, why this problems after >Restart< happen not on the Macbook Air, but on the same old 27" Mac? Both have similar systems.
Is there a Tip?
Best regards
Josef
Jane
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffI am sorry, I don't see how this answer solves anything.
I have the same problem. My desktop mac (older, but running High Sierra, 32G memory and decent disk space) becomes almost unusable for 10-15 minutes following startup.
I am pretty sure it is Dropbox, because the disk crunching and the slowing down goes away if I turn off Dropbox (or just the sync).
Just now, I know for a fact that *nothing* changed in my files between the time I logged out and then logged back in after ~1 hour. Yet, the whole sync circus started again.
It seems to me that Dropbox simply downloads and uploads every single file if it thinks something changed. Or at least, it does so with way more files than are actually in need of syncing.
Is there anything that can be done to improve this? (I use selective sync as much as possible. ) I do have a lot of files (300Gb), I use this for work. I pay something, I am not sure what level that is. I can't search my email because my computer is stuck with Dropbox syncing ...
(Also, the Dropbox icon has been stuck on "Starting ..." for about three years, but I gave up on that.)
- Jane
Hello Jane,
I am sorry for not getting back after your detailed response.
I do use the System Monitor, but I couldn't put my finger on an instance when Dropbox itself (i.e. a process that clearly relates to Dropbox) would be hogging the CPU. I could see that the disk read / writes was pretty high, but I can't provide a good set of numbers. (That was part of why I never got back, I was hoping in vain to have the time to collect some numbers.)
It looks more like an issue of the way Dropbox and the the Mac's other processes (in particular, mds_stores which relates to Spotlight) interact.
In other developments, I enabled smart sync, and it sems a bit better (upgrading the memory to 64Gb might have helped, too). I do have a lot of files (2 million) but am only using a fraction of the total storage.
My ongoing peeve is that yep, that initial slow-down is still there. The mac is unusable for a few minutes. The other issue that is annoying is that Dropbox seems to spend a lot of time updating folders that I haven't touched for years. As a result, changes in files I do update don't propagate for a long time and I end up with lots of forked versions and occasionally lose work I thought I had saved.
I don't understand how the "sync this file first" feature is supposed to work. Having to click on them one by one by hand kind of defeats the purpose of cloud storage, doesn't it? I run simulations that generate many outputs. I have versions of papers that I want my coworkers to see. I have class folders with subfolders for each student, with further subfolders for their homeworks, etc. etc.
Yes, I could be more organized with my files, and perhaps take old folders off of Dropbox or stop syncing them. But that would require spending a long time sifting through years worth of stuff... again , I thought the point of cloud storage was that (1) it is available on different machines and (2) you don't have to decide what to do with old folders due to lack of capacity.
- Thank you for the tips. Meanwhile the 27 Mac had 10th birthday. The books do fine with loading. Only the 27 takes about an hour to load. The Dropbox is 260 GB with lots of photos. The system is refreshed - since then it is 15 minutes more. For this I do not expect a solution anymore. That's computer life. In earlier days, it was much more complicated.
