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Sync hung up 'waiting to sync' one file that i've already deleted from my disk

Hello

I'm having an issue where dropbox isn't syncing any of my files because it is waiting to sync one file in particular (see screenshot below).

Before being in this state, the file tried to upload multiple times but was never completed. This could be because it's very big (~610gb). In the end, I unpacked the zip and uploaded the folders individually, but dropbox still wants to upload the zip which I've already deleted.

It also says it wants to sync almost 250000 files, which I don't think is right because it's randomly going up by a few thousand on its own.

To resolve this I've tried:

Reinstalling dropbox app
Restarting computer
Clearing dropbox cache

Any other ideas to clear this one file out of the way?

Thanks for any help you can give!

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asakul

Hi @Megan

Just following up on this. It seems that logging out/in has worked in the end! Dropbox says it has synced everything now.

I suppose the main things now are:

Reconnecting my desktop so that the things I put there are in Dropbox and not on my local desktop
Fixing an issue where my Mac folder is hidden within my Dropbox folder. The only way to reach that top-level Mac folder is to navigate up the levels from a subfolder that I have saved on my sidebar. The hidden Mac folder isn't visible when I go directly to my Dropbox folder (comparison below).

Is it possible to address these issues here, or is it better to start another topic for each of them? I had talked with Walter about the second issue 6+ months ago, but we couldn't resolve it in the end.

Thanks a lot for your help!

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All comments

Walter

Hey @asakul, sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

If you've made sure that your files don't contain any incompatible characters, could you please try fixing your hardlinks and permissions as outlined here and let me know if this persists?

Thanks so much!

asakul

Hi @Walter

I did those two steps and the app said they were completed successfully. I waited a while to see if there would be any action, and the number of synced files went down by a few thousand, but then it stopped with 290k still to go, and the movies.zip file is still hanging there.

Thanks

Megan

Hi @asakul, sorry to jump in here!

Can you also try signing out of the app, then back in again to see if that's going to give any different results?

asakul

Hi @Megan

Please do jump in; I appreciate any and all solutions. As simple as it was, signing out and back in seemed to have helped somewhat. It's still stuck at syncing (or, more accurately, indexing) 29k files now, but it's no longer trying to upload the Movies.zip file.

Besides this, I have a few significant problems which have suddenly appeared during this transition to Dropbox Backup, which forced me to completely reorganize the distribution of my files across my devices:

My desktop has somehow become disconnected from my desktop Dropbox folder. i.e., the things I put on my desktop no longer appear in my dropbox.
Dropbox says it has backed up my external drive, but the used space on my drive (3,1Tb) doesn't match the used space in Dropbox Backup (1,66Tb).
The space used by my Backup seems to be using space from my Dropbox storage itself. I'm on the Professional plan...should this be the case? I read that Backup gives you unlimited space in addition to your plan storage.
I don't understand this new setup where you can't share files in Backup, and Dropbox files aren't 'backed up.' So the files I have in Dropbox still have some backup capability because I can restore them up to 180 days after deletion, but they're not a 'secure copy'?

After using this service for the past year, I suddenly have zero trust that it's actually safeguarding my files or saving them when it says it is. Can I wipe all my files from Dropbox and then upload all my data again? Maybe that is something that can set all of these bugs straight.

Thanks again

asakul

Hi @Megan

Just following up on this. It seems that logging out/in has worked in the end! Dropbox says it has synced everything now.

I suppose the main things now are:

Reconnecting my desktop so that the things I put there are in Dropbox and not on my local desktop
Fixing an issue where my Mac folder is hidden within my Dropbox folder. The only way to reach that top-level Mac folder is to navigate up the levels from a subfolder that I have saved on my sidebar. The hidden Mac folder isn't visible when I go directly to my Dropbox folder (comparison below).

Thanks a lot for your help!

Captura de Pantalla 2022-05-24 a las 12.01.18.png

Captura de Pantalla 2022-05-24 a las 11.51.07.png

Megan

Hi @asakul, how are you today?

In order to re-connect your desktop, can you try accessing the app's Preferences, then Backup tab, and check there if you're able to enable it?

As for the second issue you mentioned, did you try contacting our Support team about this by any chance?

I also want to reply to your backup question from the other day. Keep in mind that your Backup would indeed take up space from your Dropbox account, that's how the feature works.

asakul

Hi @Megan

Doing well thanks! And you?

Issue #1 – I am able to relink by backing up, but the problem is that during my day-to-day, I need to share files easily, and with Backup I'm unable to do that. There should be a way to have my computer's folders on regular Dropbox without them being backed up, no?

Also when I was relinking just now, I ran into a couple of errors:

Dropbox thinks that my Documents folder isn't in the default location (1st screenshot). But if I go to my user folder (2nd screenshot), you can see that the Documents folder is in fact there, along with Downloads/Desktop, which are linking fine.
It seems that in trying to relink my Downloads/Desktop, Dropbox has created another instance of my Mac with only those two folders (3rd screenshot). The original instance still exists (4th screenshot), and it contains my Documents/Downloads/Desktop folders, but it looks like Downloads/Desktop are empty.

Issue #2 – I did contact support (on this forum) a year ago. You can see the conversation here. I spoke with Walter, but we couldn't resolve the folder being hidden, although he said that he could see it was backing up, so we left it at that for the time being.

I think the root of all of this is Issue #2. If there's a way to do a 'clean install' of Dropbox, I feel like that's the most surefire way to resolve the issues, because I do have all of my data backed up to two separate hard drives. Either that or a clean install of Mac OS, which might reset all of these hidden folder issues.

Issue #3 – Ok, I guess I misunderstood how the services interact! I'll either get more space or cull some files. 🙂

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Megan

Hey @asakul, I'm also doing well, thanks for asking!

To have your Desktop, Documents, Downloads folders backed up to Dropbox without using our Computer backup feature all you would need to do would be to manually copy, and paste everything.

Keep in mind, that the files wouldn't update automatically though, you'd need to do so, every so often.

Now, after reading everything you've provided me with, it sounds like a clear, clean start would be ideal indeed. I would suggest this: (for safety reasons purely) you can save all the content in an external hard drive, if you wish. If you make sure everything is synced, you should be good to go.

Then, you can uninstall the app, delete the Dropbox folder and all the content on all the paths in your device. Then you can re-install, and start from the beginning.

If you have any questions about this, don't hesitate to let me know.

asakul

Hi @Megan

Thanks for the info! I'll do the clean install asap.

Regarding the first part of your response, I'd like to clarify and make sure I'm not misunderstanding: I would like to have my most recent files syncing between my laptop and regular Dropbox storage so that I can share them/collaborate/etc. When I'm finished with a project I would move the files to an external drive, and that would back up to Dropbox Backup (taking into account that any share links will be disabled when the files are moved to the external drive).

Is this possible now? Basically having my laptop doing the everyday syncing/sharing/collaborating, and my external doing a cloud backup whenever something new is added to/deleted from it?

Thanks a lot

Megan

Hi @asakul, happy Wednesday!

It's possible that this could work. In theory that would be feasible. Want to try and give this one a go, and let us know how it goes?

asakul

Sure, I can look into it this weekend 👍

And with this option, the files that are on the regular Dropbox sync storage would have a "backup" of sorts as well, correct? Because you can rewind the folders by 180 days (on the professional plan at least). That way all files are safe in some way.

Will let you know how it goes 🤞

asakul

Hi @Megan

I was able to try this already. It looks like it's not possible, sadly.

Your Backup will work, but Dropbox won't continually sync the folders you don't have backed up unless they're inside the Dropbox folder. It's impossible to link/sync a folder (Desktop, for example) without backing it up or putting it inside the Dropbox folder. That might work for Documents, but Dropbox wouldn't connect to Desktop and Downloads, and files you download to those places would go to the local locations, not the Dropbox locations if that makes sense.

I went to the lengths to draw out a diagram to understand the interaction of Dropbox Backups and regular Dropbox 😅

It makes more sense to think of regular Dropbox as the shared folder or public partition of Dropbox versus where all of your files live. Backups is the secure partition, and Dropbox is the public partition. The marketing pages don't specify it that way, so I had trouble making sense of how they interact. Maybe it would help if they made some diagrams to explain the growing ecosystem. 😂

The only other thing is that I'm having a weird issue where the size of my Backups on Dropbox.com is different than the size in Finder, but I'll look for a similar topic or open a new one so this topic doesn't become more muddied than it is already.

Thanks for all your help!

asakul

I'm having an issue where my folders on my Mac are showing different sizes than folders on Dropbox.com (in browser). In my Desktop/Documents folders, it seems like ~93% of the data isn't showing in-browser. For Downloads, it's about 60% and a similar percentage for an external drive that I have in Dropbox Backup.

I've cleared my cache, and Dropbox says everything is up to date, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

Any ideas?

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Megan

Hi @asakul, great troubleshooting, and detail on your end!

Thanks for keeping me up to date there!

Now, as for the folder sizes on the desktop app, vs on the web, that's an interesting one. Is the first screenshot that you attached (of the folders locally) from the Desktop, Downloads, Documents folders within the Dropbox folder?

asakul

Hi @Megan

Glad to help! I was determined to figure out how I could make this work since I like the product, and it offers some significant advantages for me over Google Drive...it just took me sketching the whole product workflow like a detective haha 😂

And yes, that's correct 👍🏽 It's the synced folders in Dropbox but from Finder instead of in-browser.

Megan

Hi @asakul, happy Monday!

Can you also send me a screenshot of the desktop app's syncing status, showing the "up to date" status you mentioned?

asakul

Happy Monday @Megan 🙂

The screenshot is below 👇🏽

Thanks!

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Megan

Hey @asakul!

Have you tried contacting our Support team about this? If you could, that'd be amazing.

Feel free to reply back to me here, with the ticket number so I can then locate it on our system.

Thanks!