I can no longer save my Dropbox folder on my external drive after reinstalling the app on macOS

Question

My Dropbox folder is on a large 12TB external spinning drive, it had been working fine with the exception of an annoying pop-up from Dropbox on every boot asking me to attach my already attached external drive. In the process of trying to troubleshoot this with Dropbox support, they had me completely uninstall and reinstall Dropbox. The current version of Dropbox doesn't appear to have any option to select the external drive, it just started filling my system drive with a new copy. Unfortunately Dropbox support didn't warn me about this . . .

My question is what can I do now? Is there any way to get the existing folder on an external drive to work or do I need to abandon Dropbox?

Hannah · Answer

Thanks for the update here, @eebclee.

I'm glad to see you managed to reinstall the app and choose the external drive as the location for your Dropbox folder; it should be okay now, but be sure to let us know if you run into any issues.

Of course I completely understand where you're coming from, and wanted to let you know that I passed your comments about this along to our team.

Let me know if you need anything else!

eebclee · Answer

I think I was, that seems to be the default now? The external drive is large, encrypting it now isn't really an option.

After a few rounds of uninstalling and reinstalling and deleting all preferences and files associated with Dropbox I finally found how to opt out of File Provider, do another clean install, and get the option to use my external folder again. It's syncing now, hopefully it will work? I've spent a couple hours on this so far after the first disastrous reinstall, Dropbox should really make this more obvious instead of creating this kind of  train wreck for users.

Hannah · Answer

Hey @eebclee, thanks for taking the time to post to the Dropbox Community.

Are you by any chance using the Dropbox for macOS on File Provider version of the app after reinstalling?

If that's the case, you can see how you can use the Dropbox app with your external drive here.

Let me know if you come across any issues or if you have any questions.

Thanks!