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External drive backup complete, but vast difference in sizes

I used Dropbox to backup my external drive with 520GB of content. The backup is complete and Dropbox says it's in sync, but the size of my back up is only 428GB. Such a discrepancy scares me. Is there some really good compression, deduplication, etc. being applied?

Thanks!

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Hannah

Hey @socksinacan, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Have you checked the sync status of the Dropbox app?

You can see that by hovering your mouse over the Dropbox icon in your system tray/menu bar.

Do you see any error messages?

Also, what is your computer's OS and version?

Thanks in advance!

socksinacan

When I hover over the app in the bottom right, it says "Up to date". The Dropbox Backup page shows the drive and says the status is "Done". OS is Windows 11, app version is 148.4.4519.

Also, is there either an option or a third party tool that will let me see information on files and folders in the backup, like size?

Thanks!

Jay

Hi @socksinacan, you can view the external drive backup on the site directly. Regarding comparing the two, currently there isn't a Dropbox feature to do so, since if it states it's backed up, it means that the files are already synced successfully.

socksinacan

It's weird, though. I did an intense deduplication on the drive, bringing down from 520GB to 436GB. After syncing, the backup on Dropbox went from 426GB to 346GB. So the cleanup was mirrored in the backup, but I still have a 90GB difference between the two, even though Dropbox says they're in sync.

Nancy

Hey @socksinacan, and sorry to jump in.

Is it possible to upload some screenshots of the backup size you see both on Dropbox and your external hard drive, perhaps?

Also, I’d like you to check the main folders located on your external hard drive and double check their size on Dropbox, so that we can see if there’s a specific folder that’s missing data.

Let me know what you find!

socksinacan

Thank you for the response. I was able to get the screenshots. The Dropbox web app isn't showing folder sizes, though.

Jay

In the screenshot, it shows that the external drive backup is paused, so it possible isn't fully synced.

You can view the size of folders on your external drive on the site by following these steps.

Once you have the sizes enabled, and the drive shows as 'done' on the main Backups page, let us know if the folder sizes match with those on your external drive.

socksinacan

Yeah, it's been doing that when I turn the backup sync back on. Shows paused even though I've turned it back on and the app has displayed syncing and then synced. It eventually displays correctly. I'll check out these size steps when I can get back in front of it. Thanks.

socksinacan

Thank you for the size tip. I looked at the folder sizes in both locations, and two of the folders combined to a five GB discrepency. The rest were almost spot on between the two locations, with negligible differences. Certainly nothing to account for 80-90GB difference.

Megan

Hi @socksinacan, would it be okay for me to reach out via email in order to have a closer look?

Let me know!

socksinacan

Sure! That would be appreciated. Thank you!

Jay

Hi @socksinacan, I've emailed you directly, could you reply to the email to assist further?

_adamdunbar

I've got a similar discrepancy with all the external drives I'm backing up. Please can you share what causes this?

Hannah

Hey @_adamdunbar, thanks for the nudge here.

Can you please let us know, which version of the Dropbox app you're running and what the sync status is?

You can hover over the Dropbox icon in your system tray/menu bar, to see this info.

Also, does your backup appear to be correct in your backups page online?

_adamdunbar

I am running the latest version of DropBox backup. I literally downloaded and installed it 1-2 weeks ago.

Sync status for all three of my external drive backups show Done with a green tick.

The backup page in the online web ui shows a discrepancy in the sizes. E.g. the actual data on each drive is considerably more than the displayed size of each backup.

I also checked some of the folders and can clearly see data missing.

Megan

Hi @_adamdunbar, thanks for the added info!

When you say that data is missing, do you refer to the online content, or locally?

Can you also send us a few screenshots of the discrepancy you see on each drive's data size, so we can have visual too?