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Forum Discussion
Reconnecting synch to external drive?
Because my haddrive lacked space, I set up Dropbox to synch to an external drive connected to my MacBookAir. However, whilst travelling I disconnect the portable (external) drive and when reconnectin...
OK, here's the fix for Mac. First, rename your existing folder of files on the external drive, I chose something appropriate, "ScrewedUpDropbox." Then start from ground zero, quit DB and toss the folder it created on the system drive. Startup and relink to dropbox, let it create that folder on the system drive again and as soon as it starts syncing, pause it. Go to Preferences, change the dropbox folder location to your External HD and hit OK through the prompts. Wait for Dropbox to do its thing reloacting the folder. Before unpausing, go to the external drive in the finder and move all of your folders in "ScrewedUpDropbox" into the newly created "Dropbox" folder that's now there. Then unpause syncing. It will resync to all your files without copying, takes a fraction of the time. Whew!
Thanks Bitdropper but unfortunately Dropbox won’t allow me to link to the folder one level up which is essentially the drive itself. I am now also out of synch between my online Dropbox and the drive because whilst this is not working I’m saving only to the drive. Thank you for the advice though!
That is strange; it should have let you select the drive itself as the "folder" and then created the Dropbox Folder inside of it. I tested it and the only message I received was "The folder already contains a Dropbox directory" because I was putting it in the same location. This is what you would want it to do though. I also tested connecting an external drive to see if that was the issue you were seeing, but that gave me the following message: “This will move your Dropbox folder and all the files inside from its current location to M:\Dropbox”, to which I said cancel because I figured this should probably work and it would take a long time to put it all back. You can check to make sure it is working correctly by looking at the path where it says "Dropbox folder location." All my testing was done on a 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate OS. I could be missing something about how the Mac OS is handling it, but this does not seem like an area there should be differences. It is also possible that the Mac version of Dropbox has some differences, though I do not see why this would be one of them.
If you have not already, make sure that you are selecting the drive itself as the folder. If this functionality is not working for you at all then the next step would be to contact support here:
I have been having the same problem with my dropbox - on a Mac OS - for the past 12 months. It's fine for me to close the dropbox app then disconnect the external drive, then reconect the drive before opening the dropbox app. BUT, when I have had to reinstall the dropbox app, the DB app will not allow me to reconect the folder pathway. It forces me to resync my entire dropbox to the user, or to allocate a new folder within the external drive- a process which can take up to 3 days because of the size of the company dropbox.
See attached screenshot.
I'd really like to be able to just relink the dropbox pathway to the folder that already exists on the drive...
Thanks.
After 3 hours of trying to resync the dropbox on my Mac Os' external hardrive, the fix was something really unexpected.
I closed the dropbox desktop app and deleted the new directory it kept trying to create to my user folder. I prepared to rename the Dropbox (ES) folder of my hardrive to (OLD) by highlighting the name so that I could start a 'new' sync pathway to the hardrive - then had second thoughts so clicked out of the name field. This is where the dropbox app gave me some strange results. Dropbox automatically opened a window asking me to relink this dropbox pathway, I was able to then use the advanced settings to relink to the current dropbox to the external location.
This seems like a really strange workflow - but that's what worked in my case. I have not tried to replicate the issue as I don't have time, and I'm afraid the result may not duplicate.
- Walter
Dropbox Staff
Glad to hear you figured this out in the end AdrianDoidge - thanks for keeping us posted!
What you described is normal actually, as when you wish to re-install (or re-link) the Dropbox software and want to avoid re-downloading all of your files from the server, you need to choose the "Advanced" setup option during the installation process. You will then need to choose the parent folder of the existing Dropbox folder as the location for this new install.
For example, if your old Dropbox folder was added to: C:\Desktop\Dropbox you would need to choose C:\Desktop and the client will try and create a new Dropbox folder - as it did in your case as well. When you're connecting with the same Dropbox account as before, Dropbox will detect the existing folder and will then prompt you to merge the Dropbox folder. Upon merging the desktop version of Dropbox will check the existing files and the server versions and update accordingly.
Please note that any changes made to the files in the Dropbox folder or on the web interface while the folder was "offline" will probably generate conflicted copies.
I hope this information helps clear this up and let me know if there's anything else I can do to help with this. Thanks!
I am having this same issue....help!
Obviously, they cannot. This situation is unresolved. Sure makes housekeeping your computer (something I do once a year) a real PITA. And a waste of gigabytes and gigabytes of internet traffic. Software these days offers way to many features and not nearly enough support. They say this has been 'answered' at the top of the page. Bull. Happy re-downloading!
