How to keep an offline backup of my files?

Question

I’m trying to work out how to use Dropbox in my use case and one of the things I’ve picked up from other posts is the number of people who get told in quite direct terms that they should have an offline copy of their Dropbox files.

My question is - how does that work in a scenario where the laptop only has say 50gb spare on it and you have 1Tb on Dropbox.

Selective sync seems to be the thing that allows me to keep so much stored on Dropbox, and then just tick whatever I want to have locally. But how do I make sure all changes to Dropbox files also go to a 1Tb backup somewhere?

For me - cloud storage is about simplicity. I’d like to edit occasional files using OnlyOffice, or do picture editing and sometimes video stuff, and have a secure copy of it.  It if it needs to be in two places - can that happen automatically?

I’m just a personal (ie not business) user, doing easy normal household stuff and photo stuff .. so I’m not in to computers as such.

Walter · Answer

To be able to achieve that you'll need to use selective sync to free up hard drive space on your computer @scoob.

As for the backup of your Dropbox files, this will need to be handled by a 3rd party app or service.

When it comes to the recommendation you mentioned though, could you share some sample threads or discussions with those mentions so that we can have a look too?

scoob · Answer

Thanks.

I’ll try and describe it better.

I’ll have all my files in Dropbox  let’s say 1Tb of data

I use a laptop which only has a 500Gb HDD

The recommendation I’ve seen in more than one post is that I should also keep a second copy of my files (eg in an external drive or another cloud provider)

If my laptop only has 500Gb max how can I ensure I have a full backup of all my Dropbox files? Is there a backup option that ensure every time a file changes / is added / deleted that is then reflected in a backup somewhere

Or so people all just assume Dropbox is the only location for their files?

Megan · Answer

Hey @scoob, welcome to our Community!

Apologies for the lengthy response; I just want to be sure I cover all of your concerns.

When using our desktop app, a Dropbox folder is created locally on your device, and all of your Dropbox content is stored within it.

The content inside this folder uses your account's quota. If you choose for those files and folders to be stored locally, they also use your computer's hard drive space. For that reason, if you need to have all of your content synced locally, you must have enough available space on your device.

When using selective sync, you can essentially remove selected folders so that they don't take up hard drive space. The catch is that you won't be able to see these hidden folders inside your Dropbox folder, but you can easily adjust your selective sync settings and sync them back to your device whenever you need to.

The alternative is to make files or folders online-only. That way, they will exist locally but as lightweight  placeholders. You would simply need to change them to available offline whenever you require access to them.

Lastly, you mentioned needing files to be in two places automatically. Could you describe or let me know what you mean by that? For instance, do you mean you need the files to be both inside your Dropbox folder and in a different location on your device?

Let me know more, and we'll take it from there!