Dvd External Drive

[Claribel Szwaja]

Becausemy haddrive lacked space, I set up Dropbox to synch to an external drive connected to my MacBookAir. However, whilst travelling I disconnect the portable (external) drive and when reconnecting Dropbox fails to find the path back to the Dropbox folder on the external drive.

OK, here's the fix for Mac. First, rename your existing folder of files on the external drive, I chose something appropriate, "ScrewedUpDropbox." Then start from ground zero, quit DB and toss the folder it created on the system drive. Startup and relink to dropbox, let it create that folder on the system drive again and as soon as it starts syncing, pause it. Go to Preferences, change the dropbox folder location to your External HD and hit OK through the prompts. Wait for Dropbox to do its thing reloacting the folder. Before unpausing, go to the external drive in the finder and move all of your folders in "ScrewedUpDropbox" into the newly created "Dropbox" folder that's now there. Then unpause syncing. It will resync to all your files without copying, takes a fraction of the time. Whew!

Hmm, it sounds like when you're linking the folder back up you are placing it inside the Dropbox Folder instead of leaving it in the parent directory. Basically this is like copying a folder and then pasting it inside itself.

It sounds like you were really close to getting it to work, just one file under. With that said, you have to be careful when using external drives this way. By default Dropbox isn't really set up to do file management on external drives so you're going to have to work harder to get it to do what you want.

If you do not have to work with these files on a regular basis, you might want to look at using selective sync to only keep the files you need on your computer and keep the rest on Dropbox's servers. If you have not already done so, this should free up some space.

One last thing to check is to make sure that the external drive is being given the same drive letter, as this could also break the pathing. Depending on set up, this might change each time you plug it into your computer.

I have been having the same problem with my dropbox - on a Mac OS - for the past 12 months. It's fine for me to close the dropbox app then disconnect the external drive, then reconect the drive before opening the dropbox app. BUT, when I have had to reinstall the dropbox app, the DB app will not allow me to reconect the folder pathway. It forces me to resync my entire dropbox to the user, or to allocate a new folder within the external drive- a process which can take up to 3 days because of the size of the company dropbox.

I closed the dropbox desktop app and deleted the new directory it kept trying to create to my user folder. I prepared to rename the Dropbox (ES) folder of my hardrive to (OLD) by highlighting the name so that I could start a 'new' sync pathway to the hardrive - then had second thoughts so clicked out of the name field. This is where the dropbox app gave me some strange results. Dropbox automatically opened a window asking me to relink this dropbox pathway, I was able to then use the advanced settings to relink to the current dropbox to the external location.

What you described is normal actually, as when you wish to re-install (or re-link) the Dropbox software and want to avoid re-downloading all of your files from the server, you need to choose the "Advanced" setup option during the installation process. You will then need to choose the parent folder of the existing Dropbox folder as the location for this new install.

For example, if your old Dropbox folder was added to: C:\Desktop\Dropbox you would need to choose C:\Desktop and the client will try and create a new Dropbox folder - as it did in your case as well. When you're connecting with the same Dropbox account as before, Dropbox will detect the existing folder and will then prompt you to merge the Dropbox folder. Upon merging the desktop version of Dropbox will check the existing files and the server versions and update accordingly.

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Thanks @Walter. I understand the advanced functionality - but unfortunately, the dropbox app gives me (a Mac OS user) the error message from my screen shots, and doesn't allow me to select the parent folder because 'the directory already exists'. I'm not sure why this is.

As a follow up to my work around solution (clicking in the folder's name field and allowing dropbox to recognise the folder). I unfortunately had to delete the dropbox from my drive because of permission errors that arose with every file within the dropbox. Dropbox no longer recognised my Mac user profile with 'read & write' permissions after the relink, which meant that for each file and folder (for an entire company dropbox) required me to reset the permissions. This is because my profile experienced an update which changed the identifiers.

I couldn't just change the permission of the parent and have it take effect, I had to reset permisions manually for each file and folder (or enter my password each time I needed to update a file). In the case of wanting to create a new file and save it directly to the dropbox - it was no longer possible. I had to save it to my machine, then move it to the dropbox, and then enter a password to allow me to write to the folder.

Sorry to hear about this cumbersome situation. One thing that crosses my mind is that something did not go well when un-linking and re-linking this particular device. The permissions' error you get is usually fixed by performing an advanced re-install. Following, you'd need to point your Dropbox folder through the "Advanced" options to your already existing one on your external drive.

One thing to note here is that our software can indeed be used with an external hard drive for as long as you can ensure the drive is always connected to your computer while Dropbox is running. Should the drive ever get disconnected from the computer while Dropbox is running there is a small chance that the Dropbox software will start deleting files before realizing that the entire drive has been removed.

I hope this information clears this up a bit and if you have any further questions about this let me know and I'll reach out to you via email or go ahead and submit a ticket with our support team. Let me know a ticket ID if you do and I'll look into it ASAP.

The only way to do this is to move the whole Dropbox directory to the external drive. But that then means if it disconnects at any time or is slow to re-connect on boot up Dropbox can see this as a total wipe of all data. Unfortunately there are loads of posts on here about that happening.

Did this post not resolve your issue? If so please give us some more information so we can try and help - please remember we cannot see over your shoulder so be as descriptive as possible!

Dropbox simply requires one to connect one's external drive to one's laptop, whereupon the Dropbox app will "see" the external hard drive, and, if one wants it to do so, the Dropbox app will sync the external drive to the Dropbox cloud.

Note that placing the Dropbox folder on an external drive is NOT recommended. Under the right conditions, data loss can occur. If the Dropbox application were to start before the drive is connected or the drive becomes disconnected while Dropbox is running, it could be seen as a mass deletion which would sync to your account online, deleting your files.

I'm using dropbox for a business, so I accumulated massive amounts of data. This data does not fit on any computer anymore, so I can't download the data from dropbox and do the backup manually.

So I'm wondering, how i can backup my dropbox on an external harddrive? I think this is very important to have the data not just on cloud, but also on a harddrive, just to be safe, and to be in accordance with the law. (Some data, I have to store for 10 years and I'm accountable if it gets lost)

I have a mac currently running ArcGIS Pro through a virtual desktop with my university. However, I would like to try downloading and installing it on 2TB external drive. How would I go about this? What are the steps?

So I actually don't need to run the software on my mac I just want to know how to install the software (or download something I could later install on a PC) to my external drive. The external is called SP Silicon Power Armor by the way.

I have a PC at home but don't have access to it at school, all I have with me is the Macbook air. After I leave the university I likely wont be able to download the software anymore so I wanted to do it now with the external so I could install it on the pc when I have access to it again. To clarify: I could use the mac to download everything onto the 2TB that I need to later install ArcGIS pro onto the PC? I've never really used this external drive before and apparently it stores everything in zip files so is that still okay?

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