Learn how to make the most out of the Dropbox Community here 💙.
Forum Discussion
Solved
This folder already contains a Dropbox directory. (Dropbox 3.03 on Fedora 21 (x64)
Is this some kind of a joke? I keep my dropbox folder on a separate partition to simply redirect the dropbox daemon to that location and not have to go through the whole download process all over again. Now, after a fresh install of Fedora 21, installing this new version of dropbox prevents me from pointing it to the previously installed location stating 'This folder already contains a Dropbox directory.'.... THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED NOW!
- Uninstall Dropbox if it's installed. Rename your existing Dropbox folder to Dropbox_OLD or similar. Reinstall Dropbox and select the location that you want for the Dropbox folder. Keep in mind that external drives are NOT recommended as data loss can occur under the right conditions. When the installation is finished, Dropbox will immediately start to sync. Pause syncing or exit Dropbox. Move the content of Dropbox_OLD into the newly created Dropbox folder. When the move is complete, and not before, resume syncing or re-launch Dropbox.
At this point Dropbox will begin indexing all of your files. This process will take a while, especially with 700GB of data to go through. During this time it may say that files are uploading or downloading, but it's only transferring comparison data and any changes that it find. be patient and LET IT WORK.
John L.2Dropbox Staff
Hi Emiliano,
Are you trying to use the Dropbox folder from just Linux or both Windows and Linux?
--John
I'm experiencing the same issue on Windows 8.
- John L.2
Hi Tim,
Can you tell us some more about what is happening? Is this happening when you initially link / install Dropbox, or when you try to move the folder via preferences?
--John
Interesting point John, I was in the middle of downloading 2.10.52 from some random website to test and decided to try the other option of specifying during the installation page than via the preferences.
It works during the installation page rather than the preferences page.
I would have assumed it's the same code path, guess not.
- John L.2
Hi Tim,
Good to hear that it is working. The reason it is different is that on fresh install you don't have a Dropbox folder yet (so we try to merge with the previous one) whereas in Preferences you already have a Dropbox folder so we will just try to move it to the new location (and we won't move it if one already exists there).
--John
Hi John,
Is this a feature or bug?
- I first installed the Dropbox client on Windows. Assume it uses the directory C:\Users\joe\Dropbox in my NTFS partition.
- Boot into Ubuntu. Edit /etc/fstab so that the NTFS partition which contains the Dropbox directory on Windows is mounted automatically at boot. I assume it is mounted at /media/my-c-drive
- Install the Dropbox client for Ubuntu. During installation, let it pick its default directory as /home/joe/Dropbox
- You can see the Dropbox client running in the Panel. Quit it.
- Delete the Dropbox directory and replace it with a symbolic link to the Dropbox directory on the NTFS Windows partition:
$ rm -rf /home/joe/Dropbox
$ ln -s /media/my-c-drive/Users/joe/Dropbox /home/joe/Dropbox- Start the Dropbox client again and you are done. It will use the same directory as that used by Windows for syncing.
Note: As you might have suspected, there is a small problem with this technique. Every time you switch between Windows and Ubuntu, the Dropbox client will re-index the contents of its directory. This will happen in the background, but it will consume CPU, disk and network bandwidth. How irritating this is depends on the size of your Dropbox directory. If your Dropbox directory is large, then this type of sharing can only be a temporary solution for these reasons.
My problem is the same as Emiliano's. I use Dropbox 3.2.9 on Windows 8. My dropbox folder is in another partition. After dropbox update I can't pair old dropbox folder (D:\Dropbox) with new client. So can't use it now.
$ rm -rf /home/joe/Dropbox
$ ln -s /media/my-c-drive/Users/joe/Dropbox /home/joe/DropboxThanks, that helped me (avoid syncing 30Gb of data)!
Every time you switch between Windows and Ubuntu,
the Dropbox client will re-index the contents of its directory.Win/nix switching takes place between different PCs, but every time I boot my Ubuntu, HDD keeps scratching for 10-20minutes or so.
Same issue. Cannot merge the old dropbox folder with the new old. The method of copying the old into new doesn't work as well. It duplicates the 2 folders and said "Selective Sync Conflict". I'm going to download the old version of Dropbox that allows me to merge.
