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Starting and Syncing taking forever

Dropbox seems to be running really really slow and since it's how I share files with a co-author it's causing big problems. I rebooted my computer and it took about 20 minutes for Dropbox to finish "starting" and then it indexed and syncced in a pretty standard amount of time. I made change to several files and they haven't syncced yet. Under "recent files," the last synced file was 45 minutes ago.

I'm on a MacBook Pro running 10.11.5 and running Dropbox 21.4.25. I have no limits on the bandwidth and a speed test shows my current download speed at 230 mbps and upload speed at 15 mbps. The files I'm trying to sync are Scrivener files made up of individual txt files (so it's about 714 txt files). In the past a sync like that would take a couple of minutes max.

I have two Macs that are linked to the same Dropbox account and I use Dropbox to keep the files synced across the two computers so I can work on a file, close it, let it sync, and then my co-author can open it and work on it, etc. We've had to resort to emailing the file because the syncing is taking too long.

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Mark

Dropbox states it will start slowing down with over 100,000 files (I think!) and anything over that starts affecting performance.

As you have lots and lots on Dropbox you may wish to consider using Selective Sync to take off folders you dont use often (https://help.dropbox.com/syncing-uploads/selective-sync-overview). This leaves them in Dropbox, but, not on your machine. So I use that for things like ISO's I use once in a blue moon.

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Mark

About how many files do you have on your machine quitclaim?

A fix COULD BE to unlink and relink Dropbox - to see if your database is corrupt on the machine.

quitclaim

I'm not sure how to check how many files I have on my computer. I keep *everything* in dropbox on my computer and according to dropbox am using 5% of 2,059 GB.

I'll try unlinking and relinking - thanks!

FWIW - Dropbox just finished syncing. So it's syncing, it's just taking a really, really long time to do so.

Mark

quitclaim

I didn't realize that Dropbox would slow down at a certain point. I think I figured that on start-up it might take a bit to figure out if anything has changed since the last sync, but otherwise while it stayed running it would more or less ignore anything that hadn't changed so it wouldn't matter how many files there were (I clearly have very little idea how this all actually works - lol). In unlinking and relinking the account I realized I have *well* over 100,000 files (after half a day of indexing/synccing it was still at over 700k). It took two days just to fully sync so we'll see how it goes now that that's finished.

I hadn't considered selective sync on my main machine -- I'll think about that. I'm wary just because down the road I can see myself making a change in an old file on my computer in an unlinked folder and forgetting that it's not backing up into Dropbox. But if this fix doesn't work I may have to resort to that. Since this has been a very recent problem and not a gradual slowing down over time, I'm hoping that the re-linking has everything fixed.

Thanks for the help!

robinr

quitclaim, did the relink fix your slow issue? I am having that same issue. I tried Selective Sync, and removed many files from my desktop Dropbox folder. It does seem to have helped, but I still get that "starting" wheel that goes for a couple minutes before indexing and syncing. I wondered if the relink made a difference for you?