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How can I download a big folder to my external HDD on Mac?

Peace to all!

I was able to transfer the Dropbox app to my new external hard drive formatted and connected to my Mac, but now I am struggling to download a big folder from my account webpage. I select the folder on my account webpage and hit "Download" and nothing happens. If I try to select all the files and hit download I get an error message saying it can't zip that much. I also can't do it in batches because there are a zillion video clips. And I don't want it to zip because that can cause data loss. Could someone please help me with this?

Thanks!

Cloudie

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Accepted answers

Rich

@Cloudie wrote:
... I am struggling to download a big folder from my account webpage.

If you have the Dropbox application installed on your computer, are you not able to sync the folder normally, instead of downloading it manually?

If I try to select all the files and hit download I get an error message saying it can't zip that much. I also can't do it in batches because there are a zillion video clips.

If the folder is too large to Zip, you'll have to download it in batches. There's no other way.

Downloading a folder will always result in a Zip file, but there are limits to how big a folder can be when downloading it as a Zip. Before being compressed the folder must be less than 250GB with fewer than 10,000 files. There's no way to directly download a folder from the Dropbox website without it being Zipped first.

All comments

Rich

@Cloudie wrote:
... I am struggling to download a big folder from my account webpage.

If you have the Dropbox application installed on your computer, are you not able to sync the folder normally, instead of downloading it manually?

If I try to select all the files and hit download I get an error message saying it can't zip that much. I also can't do it in batches because there are a zillion video clips.

If the folder is too large to Zip, you'll have to download it in batches. There's no other way.

Cloudie

Seems to be resolved. I had forgotten to open the app in my Finder. Thanks.

Cloudie

Thanks, Rich! The work sync is confusing to me. But that seems to be the way to go: "Make available offline."

Cloudie

Peace to all

I was able to download my folder to the DB app on my external drive, but there's a discrepancy in the number of files

(955 online vs 1, 244 on hdd).

I would like to understand what happened, and if there are doubles, and how I can locate them.

Could anyone please help me with this?

Thanks,

Robert

Nancy

@Cloudie, can you send over a couple of screenshots showing what you see online and on the Dropbox app? I’d like to have a visual and go from there.

Ericus

I have several videos 5Gb to 15Gb and I can not download them. They are short videos and I can´t download them in parts. I also have several folders 10Gb to 20Gb and under 10,000 files each. The same happens with them, no luck downloading them. How can I get back those files, my hard drive is full and I can not sync the files with my computer to get them that way.