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continue to backup external drives with a new macbook

Hello, I have just changed my computer.

I want to continue backing up my external drives, but dropbox offers me to backup my drives again, it doesn't take existing backups into account.

I don't see options to continue with the current backups and it makes duplicates. Thank you for your answers

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Jay

Hi @opositif, the Dropbox Backup feature works per device, so if you're using a new computer, it wouldn't allow you to continue using an existing backup for another computer.

You'd need to create a new backup for this machine in order to use the feature normally.

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Nancy

Hi @opositif, and thanks for posting here.

Can you please have a look at this Help Center article, and let me know if these steps seem to help?

Keep me posted for any updates.

opositif

Hi, and thank your for your reply. But it does not help, because I don't want to restore a backup, but I want to continue with existing backup.

The only solution I see is to delete backups and create new backup but it very very long !

Anybody ??

Jay

Hi @opositif, the Dropbox Backup feature works per device, so if you're using a new computer, it wouldn't allow you to continue using an existing backup for another computer.

You'd need to create a new backup for this machine in order to use the feature normally.

opositif

Thank you Jay

that's what it seemed to me !

Jay

No worries, glad to have helped out! If you need any further assistance in the future, please let me know.

Enjoy your week ahead!

madmith

I hope dropbox understands how silly this is. I have almost 1TB of data on the drive being backed up and now I must re-upload all that content plus I loose the 30 day history. It's the exact same drive, what good reason is there for not being able to inherit the backup from the same external drive on a new computer?

Walter

Hi @madmith, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.

Your feedback has been noted in our system - please let us know if you have anything else to add.

euanburton

This is absolute madness. Just encountering this myself. Changing MacBooks and Dropbox wants me to re-upload a 2TB External HD!!

Why!?

The data is all sitting there. And I have to spend 3 days uploading all the exact same data. Waste of data, waste of electricity, waste of time.

Come on Dropbox. Do better.