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Forum Discussion

mediafp's avatar
mediafp
Explorer | Level 4
4 years ago

Why are new files marked as online-only with Smart Sync?

I like that Smart Sync will automatically push older files to online only. That makes sense and is indeed "smart."   What I don't understand is why new files are pushed to online only? That is th...
Desktop
FAQ
Sync
  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    4 years ago
    That would be the Dropbox desktop application you're seeing there, since it shows the files that would be visible in Finder.

    Any changes made on your local machine, adding or moving a file into the Dropbox folder, would make the file local. Editing a file in the Dropbox folder would keep the file local, until you mark it as online-only, or the app does it automatically after a few months.

    New files added onto your account from another machine, or via the website, would appear as online-only on your computer.
Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
Noelle7 wrote:

We supposedly have unlimited space, but I kept getting "disk too full" messages.  I found out that dropbox was saving everything locally ...

"Disk too full" is referring to your local hard drive, and not the amount of storage you have in your Dropbox account.

 

If you're putting files in your local Dropbox folder, you need to have enough disk space, at least initially, to store those files on your local drive. The Dropbox folder, even when set to Online-only, isn't a network or cloud-only folder where you're bypassing your hard drive. It's a regular folder like any other.

 

You're still saving files locally, and after they've finished syncing to your Dropbox account you can set them to Online-only to save space. If you're trying to upload 3TB of files using your local Dropbox folder, you'll need 3TB of disk space until the files are done syncing.

Noelle7's avatar
Noelle7
New member | Level 2
3 years ago

Thank you for your explanation!  Yeah, I've figured out that I'm just going to have to keep backing it up folder by folder with the space I've got.  But I'm glad that it's not a bug on my end, but rather just how it's supposed to be.  Glad I'm not doing anything wrong *phew*

 

Thank you for your reassurance! 

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