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Backup Dropbox files to an external hard drive

Rafael C.5

How can I go about making a backup copy of my files that I uploaded to Dropbox to an external hard drive?

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tessmaree

If you are downloading from the web you can just change your downloads location

ie. Safari > Preferences > General > File Download Location > Select your external hard drive location.

Hope this helps

tm.

All comments

Rich

There's no process built-in to Dropbox for what you're doing., but the Dropbox folder is no different from any other folder on your computer. Copy it to your external hard drive just like you would any other folder on your computer.

Rafael C.5

Rich R. - can you provide more instructions on exactly how to copy files from Dropbox to external hard drive? When I click on a file to copy/paste, it opens the file. I have nearly 1000 files I want to copy.

Rich

Are you doing that from the Dropbox website? If so, you would have to download each one individually, or each folder as a Zip file. You'll be better off copying the files from the Dropbox folder on your computer, which all your files will sync to if you install the Dropbox client.

Carole B.1

When backing up my Windows PC to external drive, the backup is not going through due to "problem finding file specified" related to: ...\config\systemprofile\Dropbox.

Can you help?

Harry D.5

Rich R. .. Thanks for your efforts, but please check if you can provide a solution to my situation, of which the facts are:

I'm seeking to backup my Dropbox content to an external wireless drive (Seagate Wireless Plus)..
I need the backup to be in a form which allows me Read/Write access to the copy of my Dropbox on the external wireless drive; in other words, I should be able to double click on my copy of Dropbox on the external wireless drive, and be able to view all the files and folders in there, just as I would on the Dropbox folder on my computer..
I need the Dropbox that will exist on my external wireless drive to behave as a normal Dropbox folder, in other words, I should be able to save files to it, change files on it, and so on, and for such files to sync with the self-same copies of Dropbox where ever they "live".

The warning I got from the Dropbox help files that I should only install Dropbox on the same hard drive on which the operating system 'lives'; that installing Dropbox on an external file, will cause Dropbox not to work.

There seems to be a utility called "Boxifier", but I see some traps ahead if I use that. It purports to be able to save any file the user chooses to Dropbox. Please advise. <EndOfMessage>

Linda S.6

I have 10+ external hard drives that I want to consolidate onto 1 drive. I was thinking the easiest way might be to upload everything to Dropbox and then copy to my external drive. Any suggestions on this being the easiest way to consolidate? Thank you for any advice.

Mark

The only way that would work is if you copied everything to one computers hard drive first (as this is how Dropbox works - from a folder on a computer, which is not an external drive).

Once its all in that folder you can then copy that to an external drive

Linda S.6

Thsnk you Mark, but bummer. I don't have a computer with enough space for all of my data. That's why I was hoping to upload 1 external drive at a time to get it to Dropbox.

My understanding now is that Dropbox mirrors the device/computer that's connected to it, so once I uploaded 1 external drive to Dropbox, then delete from the computer to make room to upload the next external drive, my deleted data would also be deleted from Dropbox? 🙄🤔

Mark

How about a bit of a botched work around....

Create a folder on your machine called 'Not Sync'd' (or whatever you want it to be)
Put your first hard drives worth of data in to that folder. Let it upload to a green tick - that bit is critical!!
Remove that folder from your local machine via Selective Sync
Create a new folder in Dropbox called 'temp' (or whatever)
Add hard drive 2's data to that folder
When its at the green tick (again critical) go to www.dropbox.com/home and MOVE the data from that 'Temp' folder to the one you unsync'd in step 3
That will move the data to the new unsync'd folder and thus delete it off your local computer. You may, however, need to restart Dropbox to clear the cache before moving on if you are short on hard drive space
Repeat steps 5 and 6 for the other hard drives.

Bit fiddly, but, works well.

Linda S.6

I'll give it a shot tonight 😬👍🏻 thank you

DC W.

Thank you Rich R. Very simple to do!!

snunez1

Hi all,

I would like to backup to Dropbox a big folder in my external drive (100GB) that does not fit into my computer (hence it is in the external drive). How can I go about this? Cheer, sara

tessmaree

If you are downloading from the web you can just change your downloads location

ie. Safari > Preferences > General > File Download Location > Select your external hard drive location.

Hope this helps

tm.

schmertzj

Where does a Dropbox file”live”?

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