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Forum Discussion
Dropbox full because of shared folder
Hi, i have a dropbox account and the free space that i have is full because of the files inside the shared folder that i have with some friends.
Is there a way to avoid that the shared folder that ...
Your English is very good Michele - well done!
And no, if you need read write access to that folder if will use your quota. If you just need read only access leave the share and ask the other person sends you a read only Shared link.
You can LEAVE and REJOIN a shared folder when ever you like.
So one method of getting space is to LEAVE the shared folder. And REJOIN it when you need it.
If you ONLY need some files from the shared folder and ONLY at some times, I would additionally ask the owner of the shared folder for a LINK to it, in that way you can use the link to it and download via web the files you need when you need them.
Although I don't agree with Dropbox, and this is the primary reason I won't spring for Pro, I understand why they did this.
It's simple, really. Say, someone creates 10 free accounts. 10 x 2GB = 20GB. Now, that person, from each account shares a folder with his main account. That person just got more, free, space.
I'll chime in on this with a slightly different, but related problem:
I have a Dropbox Pro account (so yes I paid for the 1TB upgrade) with Packrat Addon (also paid) and I have laptop, and an insecure Windows desktop machine. The Windows desktop is insecure because it's where I allow outsiders to test out my apps ... so a malicious trial user could easily compromise the Windows desktop machine.
So now what I want to do is to sync some folders of my Dropbox with the insecure machine. Support says the only way to do that is to create a new free account and share the folder with the new free account. Problem is, the folder is 3GB, so the free account immediately ran out of storage.
So now I have two options:
1. Use a different service to synchronize my 3GB folder with the insecure machine. (hint: Google Drive)
2. Pay for Dropbox Pro twice, once for my main account that I use on the laptop and once for my second account that I use on the insecure machine.
To me, having to pay twice as much as before just to setup a second access-restricted login to my data seems ridiculously overpriced. It's not like I'm collaborating with anyone.. I just want Dropbox to synchronize between my computers in a halfway secure fashion.
Of course, for my use case it would also be good enough if Dropbox would introduce a method for me to create additional access-restricted login credentials whose storage counts towards the quota of my paid main account.
But no matter how they intend to fix it .. for me, it's obviously a huge disappointment that Dropbox doesn't actually support safe synchronization. They do support synchronization, but if one machine is stolen, your Dropbox could be taken over. And they do support separation of rights, by creating new accounts.. but sadly, they don't support safe and synchronization at the same time.
BTW, Google Drive doesn't count shared folders towards the recipient's storage limit.
