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Forum Discussion
I'd like to sync certain folders in my Dropbox to a different drive
I know this is a frequent request, and I'm sure it will be until it's been provided!
My team relies on DB a lot and we store a great deal of large files on it. At the moment I need to sync about 320GB of data, in 2GB chunks, which is a normal amount for my work. I don't have that much free storage on my system drive, and can't free it up atm, so I'm having to sync in chunks of files, then move those to my working drive and de-sync them from my system drive, rinse and repeat. I've tried downloading them in chunks from the web but they fail when my PC locks overnight.
One solution is to set up DB in a VM and use that to sync certain folders to an external drive...but is that really the best way, when DB could just add optional paths for certain folders?
I'm constantly surprised by how basic and unfeatured the client side is!
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hi there, benhy, thanks for reaching out to us.
Although it's not possible to sync only certain folders in your Dropbox to a different drive, you can move the entire Dropbox folder to a different drive, if you want.
You can see how to go about that in this article from our Help Center.
Having said that, we appreciate your feedback on this and I will make sure to pass your comments along to our team.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks for the reply - the DB folder is 18TB and growing all the time. Not really an option!
Is this issue on a planned changes list? It's a real problem for us, and I'm sure it is for others too.
Hi benhy,
Unfortunately, Dropbox doesn't support sync in different folders or drives. The only place Dropbox sync is the Dropbox folder and all content inside, but nothing outside. There is a workaround though. You may combine physical drives in virtual bigger drive - RAID. 😉
RAID would work on all Dropbox supported platforms. On some platforms may be available other ways too, but it very platform specific.
Hope this gives directions.
I'm going to add this in here, just to emphasise how unsuitable the Dropbox desktop app is:
I decided to set up a new VM and set up DB to use an external drive, and choose to only sync the folder I want to an external drive. Initial problems were that on Ubuntu, DB would only sync to an EXT4 drive which is of no use to the software environment I work in. So I set up a new Windows VM and attached the drive. DB complained that it would only sync to an NTFS drive, and this was Exfat (we use that because we use Windows and Mac). So I moved all my other data off that drive, and formatted it to NTFS.
It's been syncing overnight, and I checked it this morning to find that it was 'uploading 54 files, downloading 69 files'. What's it uploading????? There's no way to actually see this, as far as I can tell.
DB is a fantastically useful tool, but it really needs a lot of work on the desktop side!
benhy wrote:..., and this was Exfat (we use that because we use Windows and Mac). ...
There is no chance to share physical storage in such a way 🤷. You may, but need to "share" the application too. Setup a network drive - either pre-built or some old PC with installed Ubuntu (for instance) - and share the Dropbox folder with all available subfolders there. In such a way you may use the same folder(s) on all machines regardless every machine' OS.
Good luck.
