How can I stop copying onto my hard drive?

Question

I tried moving files from an external drive to my computers hard drive into the Dropbox folder. The size of all these files was larger than the capacity of my hard drive. When I look at my Dropbox directory now in Finder, this folder shows a circle icon with a curved arrow (refresh icon?). When I click on this folder, I get a pop up with two options….”Finish Copying” or “Keep Resumable Copy”. If I click the first one, I get a message that I’m out of storage space”. When I click the second one, it closes the pop up but I still can’t get to the folder and view what is in it or add to it. What do I do to stop the copying/moving operation?

Nancy · Answer

To answer your first question, yes, that is possible. You can keep your local Dropbox folder with your internal drive’s files on it, while also backing up your external hard drive to the Dropbox cloud.

Regarding the message you keep getting, can you pause the Dropbox app’s syncing and move the files of your external hard drive back to their original place? After that, you can resume syncing and set up the external drive backup.

Let me know if that works, or if you face any issues along the way.

Sophf · Answer

Thanks for the response, Nancy. Is it possible to do the external drive backup with the external drive while also having my computer’s hard drive tied to the more traditional Dropbox? My external drive has all my past years photographs on it, and my current years on the hard drive since they are more easily accessible and I’m editing them more.

I’d still need to fix the issue outlined above

Nancy · Answer

Hi @Sophf! Hope you don’t mind me jump in.

Since you’re on a Mac device, the Dropbox icon will appear at the top right corner of your computer (where your clock settings are showing). To see the app version of your Dropbox app, please hover over that Dropbox icon at the top.

Other than that, since you previously mentioned you were moving files from an external hard drive to Dropbox, would our external drive backup feature help with what you’re trying to do? I’m asking because, if you use it instead, it won’t affect your hard drive space, and your external drive’s files will be backed up to your web Dropbox account directly.