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Can't sync due to low disk space

Very annoying. Dropbox is giving me the 'can't sync due to low disk space' message - this is on a new system with a 1TB drive with 260G available. We have a 50G biz account, and we're using about 4% of it. ATM, this is the only machine attached to it.

Please fix this, guys. OneDrive/MS doesn't need any more money.

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Sanchez

Hey everyone (@TheAtanaGroup & @Roryb),

We’ll be glad to take a closer look. If you would you like for our team to investigate this further, you can either submit a ticket here, or I can get one going for you from my end. Let me know.

Thanks

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Walter

Hey @TheAtanaGroup - welcome to the Dropbox Community!

Sorry to hear about this - let's have a look into it now.

The low disk space error you see is likely coming from your computer's OS and is referring to your local hard disk space. If you see that you are still well below your quota on the web, it is probably because the hard drive you store your Dropbox Folder is out of free space and won't be able to accommodate all of your data. Since files stored in your Dropbox are also stored on your computer, your hard drive must have enough space to store the files that are in your account.

Also note that you can alsways use our Selective Sync feature which comes in handy in situations where you have files which you would like to keep but don't need them taking up space on your hard drive.

Last but not least, have you considered using our Smart Sync feature which will enable you to set files to be ‘online-only’? In this way, the files will be removed from your computer and will take up practically no space.

I hope this helps and please keep me posted. If this problem persists, feel free to include a screenshot of the exact error you get to have a better look or even better log a ticket with our team and let me know a ticket ID so I can follow up with more info about this internally.

Roryb

Same issue. I have way more space on my machine than in dropbox and it keeps dropping out with low disk space warnings with over 90Gb freed and trying to sync a 1mb file.

Norah

Hey @Roryb, welcome to Dropbox Community!

A screenshot of the warnings you receive (omitting any personal information) would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance for your reply!

Sanchez

Hey guys (@TheAtanaGroup & @Roryb),

I’m just checking in to see how this is going. If you are still experiencing this, please write in to our support team here for further assistance.

If the Dropbox account you’re concerned with is associated to the same email address as your forum profile, let me know, and I’ll be happy to create a support ticket for you.

Have a great weekend

TheAtanaGroup

Did you even read what I posted? Re: "The low disk space error you see is likely coming from your computer's OS and is referring to your local hard disk space." -- This is incorrect. But make sure you guys vote it up as a solution, at least until you get it fixed.

Mark

It is accurate and correct information TheAtanaGroup, but, if thats NOT happening for you as has been requested can you log a ticket and post screenshots.

Remember as well that if your Dropbox folder is not on the main drive (i.e. C usually) it could be one of the two drives thats causing the issue.

Roryb

It was not accurate for me and it would appear for the earlier poster. There is a lot of space on my chance with a single drive and Dropbox keeps complaining. It would appear that the issue is realted to either the Dropbox cache or the Drive Cache and Dropboxes inability to measure this accurately after a recent update leading to a false warning about low disk space.

Mark

Hence a request to log a ticket if not already done so and post screengrabs. Oh and version numbers help so things can be logged together

TheAtanaGroup

All I can do is respond in the context of what I posted - it's certainly not accurate on my box, when I have nearly 500 gig available at this point and still get the error on a DB subscription that should only allow us 50G of storage. You can post whatever you like - the fact remains that DB on my box is getting it wrong. I suspect there's an issue in the local executable where the API call to GetDiskFreeSpaceEx is throwing an exception, and there's a handler that's just catching it and returning a fail. Unless you're doing something like using WMI or something to allocate disk space (any of that 'SELECT * FROM Win32_DiskQuota' stuff is asking for trouble in a distributed production environment)

Regardless, your post is incorrect, at least for my box and configuration. There's plenty of disk space on this box.

Sanchez

Hey everyone (@TheAtanaGroup & @Roryb),

We’ll be glad to take a closer look. If you would you like for our team to investigate this further, you can either submit a ticket here, or I can get one going for you from my end. Let me know.

Thanks

frustrateduser0

I've got plenty of space on my MBP but cannot download the file using the app, when while using Selective Sync. Tried thrice already. Very frustrating. Screenshots attached for reference.

Screen Shot 2018-05-01 at 7.29.30 PM.png

Jane

Thanks for sharing what you’re experiencing @frustrateduser0, @TheAtanaGroup & @Roryb,

Let me briefly summarize what I gather from your descriptions & @frustrateduser0’s screenshot, as I’m under the impression that you’re all experiencing the same behavior:

To my understanding, in the Dropbox notifications panel on your desktop you’re receiving a message that reads:

<SPAN class=" author-d-iz88z86z86za0dz67zz78zz78zz74zz68zjz80zz71z9iz90za3z66zsz65z7gz85zz86zz70zz79zz80z3z85z6z87ziz78zz83zigfz86zz80z5z80zblcz70zz86z">Your hard drive is full! Use Smart Sync to free up space.</SPAN>

That all being said, I’m assuming that you all have the available space to sync on the drive your Dropbox folder is allocated (that is my understanding based on @TheAtanaGroup’s last post here).

For that reason I’ve made sure to create 3 separate Support requests on our system on your behalf & I’ll make sure to check back with you there more closely once I receive your replies.

Thanks again for posting your findings & troubleshooting you’ve already done here & I’ll be awaiting your next messages. Happy May!

Roryb

This seems to come up whenever i start approaching 80 Gb of free disk space. Now popping up again when I am trying to sync <1Gb of new files.

Screen Shot 2018-05-14 at 17.41.10.png

Roryb

And now getting suggestions for SmartSync - needless to say not something I want to use as a) I don't need to - plenty of space and b) it doesn't work offline.

Screen Shot 2018-05-14 at 17.57.53.png

Jane

Hey @Roryb, thanks for reaching back out to me here & I hope you’re having a great Monday so far!

I’ve made sure to run a search on our system on my end, I’ve located your newest open ticket & I’ve made sure to reply to you there. This way, I’ll send you the most appropriate next steps based on the info I have on my tools & help you reach a resolution as quickly as possible.

Whenever you find some time, please check your inbox for my email & I’ll make sure to promptly follow-up with you from where we’ve left off here.

Thanks again for your detailed messages & I’m wishing you a fruitful week ahead!

MitchMcAlistair

What I've found, through trail and error, that with the 'ordinary' sync'ing, you need x2(ish) the amont of space when trying to get a file uploading and syncing in your Dropbox folder. To explain this 'x2'...

I had a 254GB file to upload. It wasn't until I freed up the same amount of free space on my 1TB drive that it sync'd up. Now I'm hoping that's because there's a lot of error checking going on, that as it goes up there's a 'ghost' file produced of the same size, which is then deleted once the file is up. On small files, this is no problem, but on large files watch out.

Would be best if Dropbox were a little more transparent on this as I wasted an awful lot of time working it out. A simple warning about large files sizes syncing would suffice. So now smar sync is here, I'm on board trying it out.

Mark

Hey Mitch,

Thats not something I've ever seen on here before, but, it would make some sense. Thank you for posting