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Dropbox is creating multiple copies of my files and saving them to my now full hard drive.

I have a MacBook Air and do not keep a lot of large files (photos, music, movies, audio etc) on my hard drive. But the other day I got a message that I was out of disc storage!
When I investigated it, I discovered that nearly every file on my computer had been duplicated multiple times and given a Dropbox file location. However, when I look in my dropbox folders and online, the documents are not in Dropbox! WHAT IS GOING ON AND HOW CAN I DELETE ALL THESE DUPLICATE FILES AND STOP THIS!!!!!

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Accepted answers

Lifer10

Click on the Dropbox icon in your menu bar or system tray.
Click on the gear icon and then select Preferences.
Click on the Sync icon at the top bar
Unclick every folder marked and leave clicked the ones you want to synk on your computer.
Dropbox will erase every copy it made on your computer and will not longer create files on your hard drive.I

I had the same problem and I just figured out how tofix it. Good Luck.

[This thread is now closed by moderators due to inactivity. If you're experiencing a similar behavior, feel free to start a new discussion in the Dropbox Community here.]

All comments

DaveC2

If they are not in your dropbox folder then its not dropbox doing it.

Elyse g.2

PLUS, WHEN I TRY TO DELETE THEM, DROPBOX PREVENTS ME FROM DELETING THEM FROM MY HARD DRIVE. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT??????

Nery D.

Similar problem is happening with my DROPBOX FOR BUSINESS. I am watching DROPBOX AT THE MOMENT create confliciting copies of files that I have deleted. Support has been no help!

Elyse g.2

What application could possibly be doing this? it's so bizarre. and the locations all have "dropbox" in the path name. Does anyone have any clues or has anyone figured out how this happened? If I have to go through nearly 1 MILLION files deleting duplicates, I don't want to restart and find multiple copies back on my hard drive.

DaveC2

@Elyse g.

YOU SAID >>> However, when I look in my dropbox folders and online, the documents are not in Dropbox

AND NOW YOU SAID >>> and the locations all have "dropbox" in the path name.

.

So which one is it, since your story's changing.

Elyse g.2

Yes, that is the confounding thing. Most of the duplicates have "Public/Dropbox" in the file path/location/"name" but if I go to my Dropbox folder at dropbox.com as well as on my Dropbox desktop version, they are not there! But they still are identified as taking up something like half of the available disk space.

DaveC2

What is the full path from drive letter to DROPBOX folder?

And are the duplicates containing all the content of your dropbox?

Elyse g.2

I just contacted the Legal Department, since Dropbox.com does not provide any one-on-one support for this, and we are not the only ones wasting a lot of time and energy on it. I was on the phone with applecare for almost 4 hrs yesterday and another hour + today, with no brilliant solutions emerging. So, I spent the $$ for a great Duplicate Finder app but that only gets me part way there since now those with Dropbox file names evidently cannot be deleted

Elyse g.2

Yes, but that is not more than 100 files. There are something like 900,000 files on my hard drive, of which nearly 300+ are duplicates of very large files. Sample path for a video file (but there are all other types of files duplicated like this) is

"Users/MyMacBookAir/Public/DropBox/Archive Photo 2/London Trip Videos/London Trip Videos from Panasonic Videocam" In that case, the duplicates all have a different "Archive Photo #" but are the exact same video.

Richard P.

"Users/MyMacBookAir/Public/DropBox/Archive Photo 2/London Trip Videos/London Trip Videos from Panasonic Videocam"

That DropBox is actually unrelated to this service - its a folder created by Apple for people to drop files into your computer when you turn that ability on on your Mac. Completely and utterly not related to Dropbox.com which is why you aren't seeing them synced.

Sorry, but it would seem that Dropbox isn't to blame in this situation

Elyse g.2

Thank you, Richard! But how are other people dropping these files into my computer, if they are my files? Not sure how that happens. So, you are saying that there is something on Macs that is called "Dropbox"? That seems odd, since in at least 5 hours with AppleCare, none of the advisors or their supervisors mentioned this! How do I turn it off?

Thanks again for any solutions you can provide.

DaveC2

@*Elyse g. *; I would suggest you ring Applecare back and tell them what dicks they are then.

10 seconds of searching on google and I found this.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18716?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

Elyse g.2

WOW. Dave, that is both great news and ridiculous news, as I think my total hours on phone is something like 6-8 hrs in last 2 days. -- I myself did not notice the difference between "Drop Box" (with a space between words, which is the Apple OS feature) and "Dropbox" (no space between words, which is the 3rd party software) until I noticed it today and pointed it out in the file paths I've been discussing with 2 different AppleCare supervisors.

The one today said he was completely unaware of it, had to go to someone else and find out about it while was on hold!

He says its a permissions issue. We managed to clear out about a third of my total disc space by deleting duplicate files (a couple of nights ago I had downloaded a program called Araxis that finds and deletes duplicate files), and clearing out the Drop Box (with space) folder on my hard drive.

I don't know why all my Google-ing and searches didn't get me to the page you pulled up. Maybe because I didn't put a space between the "Drop" and the "Box"

I don't know why Apple and Dropbox aren't suing each other for using the same name and confusing Apple's customers. Or maybe they did.

Anyway, I'm giving you an "up vote" for whatever that's worth! THANK YOU!

DaveC2

No worries, perhaps google are using smart logic, they know your using an apple (via browser ids) and might have dropbox so didnt display you the apple vs dropbox pages, hopping you will get annoyed enough you will by google drive :-P

(conspiracies everywhere!)

I Voted up Richard P. for the real hit on it, as I looked at the path and was like WTH is the folder doing in there?

Elyse g.2

Ha! Yes you're right. I would love to find a search engine based purely on relevance. it's getting very out of hand on Google, thanks for reminding me!!!

Tine J.

Hey guys.

I got the same problem.. but in my case, its dropbox and not macs drop box who are doing it.. Im going insane!

Users/Privat/ - and together with Desktop, Documents, Downloads, music, public and so on is my Dropbox - Dropbox (old (1)) and Dropbox (old (2)).

I can't work because dropbox takes all my space on my imac.. I believe that if I delete the folders I delete my dropbox content...

Please help.. I got clients who are waiting for there orders

alison r.2

I don't know if this is exactly the same issue or if it will solve the different problems, but I too had a dropbox (version 3.17.32) folder that contained multiple duplicate files (labelled xx(2) xx(3) etc. My duplicate file finder could not 'see' them, and therefore could not delete them. It came up with a list of zero duplicates.

I have now run the same exercise on my work computer (on both machines dropbox was saying it was 'synced'), and magic - it has found 1900 duplicates. No idea what has gone on. But it may pay to look at other computers that are supposed to be synced to the cloud dropbox

elyse g.

Thanks everyone,

I'm sorry not to have posted this earlier but my PROBLEM IS SOLVED!!!

It turns out that there is a Drop Box file in Mac's OS but it is not the same as the Dropbox website/software, where we are now. it's very confusing, but as I recall, the Mac OS file has a space between the 2 words and this website doesn't.

Let's hope Apple's Applecare people forward what I told them about how confusing this is. Can't believe there isn't some trademark claim going in either directions.

So, after some struggle with the Apple folks, this turned out to be the source of the confusion. It had to do with the Mac OS, not Dropbox.

Adam S.56

Drop is duplicating all my files on all our computers filling up the hard drives, how do I stop this from happening? Who at drop box authorized this and what is their contact information?

aXg

This is also happening on one of our clients computers. It just started last week and the duplicates are only showing up on Macs and not Windows computers which tells me there is a bug in the Dropbox desktop app for Macs. Last week a DB tech gave the instructions to purge the Mac DB cache. It worked for one folder, but now the duplicates have returned. Many of the duplicates have the file name of (deleted .......) at the end.

This is a very serious problem especially for people with limited hard drive space, and seeing how long this has been going on tells me DB has no way to solve this. This is a bug in the Mac desktop app and has been going on for over a year looking at the date of the original post!!!!

If the next level of tech support cannot fix this tomorrow I will suggest to my client that they move to a different file sharing system and I will also see if a class action law suit can be started.

richk1

a bit tricky to execute, but this worked perfectly:
http://www.imore.com/how-sync-your-documents-desktop-and-any-other-folder-dropbox

One important note though: even once I created the symlink, it didn't automatically sync to dropbox as the article indicates. I had to create a folder in dropbox (named mine "laptop files") and then dragged the symlink shortcuts into the "laptop files" folder and everything syncs perfectly without creating duplicates on my laptop.

Lifer10

Click on the Dropbox icon in your menu bar or system tray.
Click on the gear icon and then select Preferences.
Click on the Sync icon at the top bar
Unclick every folder marked and leave clicked the ones you want to synk on your computer.
Dropbox will erase every copy it made on your computer and will not longer create files on your hard drive.I

I had the same problem and I just figured out how tofix it. Good Luck.

[This thread is now closed by moderators due to inactivity. If you're experiencing a similar behavior, feel free to start a new discussion in the Dropbox Community here.]