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Why did the sync status of my files changed to online-only all of a sudden?

I've been a Dropbox user since, gosh, who knows when. Suddenly, at some point this week, my default state switched from available offline to online only. I don't recall upgrading my OS or making major changes to my devices so I'm not sure what might've triggered this out of nowhere.

I recall seeing the notification saying something along the line of "your hard disk is almost full" - which I don't think was true. I always selectively toggle the online only option after I wrap up my projects, so I always have 200+ GB of free space. Even if this was true, I don't think Dropbox should make the decision to switch 200+ GB of files to online only without my consent.

I'm in the middle of some big projects, and having my files suddenly all go online only before I could do physical backups was an unpleasant surprise, especially since I live in a country with slow internet. I've found the option to change my default state back, but I want to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Did something recently change from Dropbox's end? How could I prevent this from happening in the future?

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Comments

Nancy

Thanks for posting on our forum today, @franzanth!

Do you remember how much available hard drive space you had at the time perhaps?

This will help me assist you further.

Let me know once you have more info.

franzanth

Thanks, Nancy! I'm not sure actually, the notification came out of nowhere. Based on how many files suddenly disappeared from my machine, I'm sure it was at least 50+ GB

Nancy

I see, thanks for clarifying. One more thing I’d like to ask; are you, by any chance, running the Dropbox desktop app on File Provider? Had you made your files available offline by manually right-clicking on them and selecting the relevant option from the menu?

In general, if you're on File Provider, and you start to run low on hard drive space, it’s expected behavior for the app to switch your files to online-only, in order to prevent you from having issues with file syncing later on.

Since it’s hard to tell now for sure though, please let me know if this occurs again and your hard drive space is not the issue.

franzanth

I just checked, and your diagnosis is spot on, thank you!

What's the hard drive space threshold that triggers this switch? Just so I could prevent this from happening.

I know your team have a lot of things to consider, but personally, I'd appreciate the switch to not be automatic, or at least come with a prior warning. With my slow internet, having to partially redownload my missing recent files, back them up physically, then reactivate the online only toggle bit by bit so I don't trip that threshold by accident is a multi-hour task. Hopefully this perspective is worth considering.

Thanks again, really appreciate the explanation!

Megan

Hey @franzanth, let me also jump in here!

There's not a specific hard drive space number that we're aware of. This happens automatically on the back-end.

In any case, your comments on this have been quite helpful, and I will do everything I can to ensure that your voice is heard.

I'll forward your feedback to the appropriate areas so we can continue to improve.

If you need something else, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help every step of the way.