How can I download all the files in my Dropbox account to an external drive?

Scott_Horton1966

My old external 2TB hard drive crashed. I need to download all the files (about 1.6TB worth) I have online (in the Cloud) down to my new external hard drive. I'm not seeing an easy way to do that. I would appreciate any help. Thanks much!! Scott

Hannah

Hey @Scott_Horton1966, thanks for your post!

Sorry for the lengthy reply, I just want to make sure we cover everything.

To get to the point, you do have a lot of content in your Dropbox account, as you said, so it would be quite time consuming to download everything through the website.

Instead, I'd suggest that you install the Dropbox desktop app to your computer. If you choose this way, you have a couple of options on how to go about the process:

1. During the installation, you might see an "advanced settings" option, which should allow you to choose the external drive as the location for your Dropbox folder and sync the files directly to the external drive. Just make sure you choose to sync them as "available offline" when asked.
2. Allow the app to sync as it would by default, with the Dropbox folder on your internal hard drive, and then manually copy the files over to the external drive.

The catch here is that the files will need to take up space on your internal drive in order to sync and for you to be able to open them as normal when you copy them over to the external drive.

I know this is a lot of info and a bit complicated, so feel free to ask me anything before you try any of the above.

Thanks!