You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Status:
Closed
Can we have more folder options like custom folders or sub-folders to add to Computer Backup?
Right now, the automated backup option in Dropbox allows me to sync my Documents, Desktop and Downloads folders. By far the biggest - and most important - folder on my computer is the Music folder though. I can imagine for other people it's Pictures. Could we have a way to automatically backup those folders too?
To be really ambitious: would we be able to clone our computer on Dropbox? I used to have an Apple Time Machine that allowed you to do just that. If your computer broke down or was stolen, you could buy a new one, let it download the clone, including not just your documents but your applications and presets too, and you'd be good to go!
Please let Dropbox be the new Time Machine.
Yes. Dropbox keeps ignoring this issue, for years now. In particular, if your shell folders (Desktop, Documents, etc., etc.) are not in their default locations, you will not be able to backup anything whatsoever, see below:
That ludicrous suggestion of moving those folders to their default locations is particularly galling.
This does look like a very bad feature design.
Sorry, but the fact that I can't select specific specific folders to back up -- beyond Desktop, Documents, etc. -- is insane. Like during development, someone had to say "No, we only want limited functionality for our uses. So we are going to restrict what folders they can back up." That is truly baffling.
Fun fact, if the dropbox folder is on a different partition than these basic Desktop, documents etc. locations, then this wont work as wel!
I was intending to try and fool this poor feature by making some links into the Music directory (via mklink), but the partition issue didn't allow me to even try that. But maybe mklink could work for someone else, who has the Dropboz folder on C partition.
Not sure if someone has mentioned that now on Mac Pictures, Music folders could be synched too with Dropbox. Every other files, documents i need to sync, i put under Dropbox folder
It's a shame that this has not been implemented or even acted on, despite having been informed about this almost 2 years ago.
Especially becasue they are fast when they want our money for the subscription, but not when they need to develop
It's baffling that this extremely basic feature is not supported by DropBox until today.
The current status of this feature is that you can now backup external drives as well as any arbitrary folders within your own user folder. I would prefer to be able to select any folder within the C drive, since I do place some documents at the top of my C drive, though I am probably just weird. This feature is in a much better place than when this idea was posted over 2 years ago, but maybe the developers can be convinced to remove this one last restriction? 🙂
Actually, no, there has been no meaningful progress of any kind at all. This is for how many years now?
And, no, if you happen to have your Documents, Pictures, etc., folders in anything but the default location, you will not be able to backup anything whatsoever. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Dropbox will ask you to move these folders to their default location, which is rank idiocy, and simply impossible for anyone who had a good reason to move those folders in the first place.
