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How to move the contents of Dropbox to an external hard drive?

jayne

how do I move contents of dropbox

i.e my files and photos to an external hard drive

thanks folks

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Rich

Do you have the Dropbox client installed on your computer? If so, then your files will be syncing to your computer. They'll be in the Dropbox folder. Just copy them to your external drive like you would any other file.

If you're not already syncing your files and you just use the Dropbox website, then you'll need to download your files and save them to your external drive. The easier method would be to install the Dropbox client, let it sync all of your files to your computer, uninstall the client, and then move the Dropbox folder to your external drive.

Jane

Hey @TominAZ,

Welcome to the Dropbox Community, let's look into that together!

Please keep in mind that as a rule of thumb we recommend choosing a location for the Dropbox folder on the same hard drive as your operating system, since Dropbox won't work correctly if the Dropbox folder becomes inaccessible, which can happen if it's located on an external drive that gets disconnected.

Should you decide to go per this option regardless, though, please follow these steps.

Of course, we’re always here if you need further assistance!

Warm regards,

JaneA

[mod edit 2023, updated Help Center link]

All comments

LIUTAURAS

If you want them to be synchronized parent folder should be created in your external drive

jayne

not synchronised as such , copied I meant - to another storage facility such as a external hard? I'm a newbie so not very techie
thanks

Sanchez

Hey @jayne, welcome to our forum!

Do you have our desktop application installed on your computer? If so, do you want to have your local Dropbox folder and keep another copy on an external hard drive?

Let me know, and we’ll take it from there.

Thanks!

Rich

TominAZ

No, I want to move Dropbox to an external drive off my very crowded hard drive, and I bought a 5T drive to do that. It is on the Dropbox cloud, so I don't need it on two drives at my house.

Jane

Hey @TominAZ,

Welcome to the Dropbox Community, let's look into that together!

Should you decide to go per this option regardless, though, please follow these steps.

Of course, we’re always here if you need further assistance!

Warm regards,

JaneA

[mod edit 2023, updated Help Center link]

meremer

I'd like to move items off of Dropbox completely and onto my external HD, bypassing my computer altogether.

How do I do this?

Rich

Download them from the Dropbox website, and specify your external drive as the Save location in your web browser.

Sanchez

Hi @jayne, @meremer, & @TominAZ

Would you mind taking a minute of your time to fill out a survey sharing your experience using our Dropbox Community? You can access the survey here: http://bit.ly/2lNKIxT

Thank you!

Love2sin

From the Google.com main page

1. Click on the 3 stacked dots at the top right of your screen

2. Click on SETTINGS

3. Scroll down to page click on ADVANCED at bottom of page

4. Scroll down to DOWNLOADS

5. Where its "Location" to the far right Click on CHANGE

6. "Browse for Folder" Choose Drive you want to download your info to and Click OK

----------

Part 2

1. At the "Home Page" on the top right of screen click on "FILES"

2. At My Files page open on the folder you want to download from if you want to download from a subfolder open the subfolder

3. Once you're at the location you want to download from hold down the CTRL button at the bottom right of your keyboard the press the A key CTRL+A ( This will highlight the items to be download from that page

4. At the right of your screen click on DOWNLOAD

Files should now be in your External Drive

JuliesHeart

I would like to know how to keep dropbox on my laptop and have a copy on an external hard drive just incase something happens. I do not want to lose my designs. I want them saved permanently on my own external drive. Thank you for your help!

Sanchez

Hey @JuliesHeart,

So, you want to keep the Dropbox folder that’s syncing to your account, on your computer, and have another copy on your external hard drive? If this is the case, you’ll need to search for some backup software solution that will back up files from your computer to the external, automatically.

Something to take note of: if your files are in your Dropbox, and “something happens”, we can help recover those files for you. We can restore previous versions, specific folders, and even your entire account. Most accounts have a 30-day limit on these types of recoveries, so if the need for recovery assistance ever arises, I suggest that you contact our support team asap!

Cheers

me5531

Like everyone else, I'm having trouble moving files from dropbox to an external hard drive. Why would anyone use dropbox knowing how difficult this is? This is a temp solution with a no-win ending!

@jayne wrote:
how do I move contents of dropbox

i.e my files and photos to an external hard drive

thanks folks

Walter

Sorry to hear you're having troubles using our software @me5531 - would you mind elaborating on what exactly is not working for you?

If you want to move your Dropbox files to an external drive you should be able to do so normally supposing the external drive is one of a supported format ( NTFS for Windows, HFS+ or APFS for Macs while it should also work for ext4 on Linux devices) so I would appreciate a screenshot of the error you get, if any that is.

Also, have you heard about Selective Sync which is a great way to free up disk space on any of your connected devices?

Let me know what you find and we'll take it from there. Thank you in advance for your reply.

me5531

I need computer directions in simple terms that normal people can understand. I have one file of pictures in Dropbox and now it is saying I need more storage before I can view the next set of pictures which are coming soon. I wanted to move the pictures from Dropbox to an external hard drive without blowing up another laptop. It should be a simple step, but from what I read, no one finds it simple. I don't use an apple product, just a laptop with an external drive. There are 208 pictures in Dropbox (which I don't consider alot) and I can't move them. Help?

Walter

Thanks for the additional information @me5531!

So you get an error when you try to move your files from your Dropbox Folder (on your computer) to your external drive, right?

Would you mind sending a screenshot of the exact error message you get so as to send you the most appropriate next steps?

In addition, as you described this, I understand that your account is close to its storage limits. Is this correct? If so, to get your account under quota (or expand its storage) so as to be able to accommodate the next set of pictures as you put it, you can do any of the following:

Upgrade your account.
Increase your quota using referral bonuses or other promotions.
Leave any shared folders that put you over quota.
Move files that don't need to sync out of your Dropbox folder.

Let me know how this goes!

anarvaja

This is fine. But it does not solve the problem. There should be a way to copy files directly from Dropbox to an external storage device (USB HDD for example) without the need to sync them to the local computer's HDD.

Moreover, Dropbox should give users the possibility to sync their Dropbox files to an external drive directly, without intermediate steps.

Thanks.

Walter

In this case, you could use the website (at https://www.dropbox.com) and change your browser's settings to point to your external hard drive @anarvaja!

malwood

how do i upload to a thumb drive a quickbooks file in dropbox

Alicia Devine

My internal hard drive on my Mac is nearly full. I want to download pics from Dropbox and store them in my external hard drive but after following the process explained on the Dropbox site, it's not letting me do that. Why is that. I have synced my new external hard drive to my computer and they seem to be talking to each other, so why won't the files download? Help please? Many thanks.

avgmacuser

Hello Dropboxers @sanchez, @jayne.

Like many many other Dropbox users, I use SMARTSYNC to keep my hard drive from filling up. Nevertheless, I want to back up all my files, including those that reside ONLY in the Dropbox cloud (due to SMARTSYNC) to an external hard drive. This is best practice for data safety: true backup safety requires that my files in the Dropbox cloud, that are NOT on my computer hard drive, must be backed up on separate medium. In my case, I want them to be backed up to an external hard drive.

The question is how to do this: how can I back up all the contents of my cloud Dropbox (including those files that are Smartsynced and therefore are not present on my computer hard drive) to an external hard drive.

Please do not tell me that Dropbox has great servers and I should not worry. Please do not tell me to change the location of my Dropbox to the external drive, as that is an unworkable solution, it´s not something one can or should do periodically, and it may screw up all my SMARTSYNC settings on my computers internal hard drive. Please give me, and the rest of the community, a straight answer on how this can be done.

I also wish to note that simply going on the browser version of Dropbox and downloading everything is a terrible solution: sometimes Dropbox tells you that you're trying to download too much, sometimes it just freezes, and I'd have to select manually each and every folder to back up, every time I need to do so. Since I have about 2 TB worth of data on the Dropbox cloud, this is unwieldy.

I have to say, I am on the verge of dropping my Dropbox Professional account, switching to the free one, and moving everything somewhere else since Dropbox seems to be purposefully preventing users from effectively backing up their data to an external hard drive, for reasons I cannot fathom.

HareDraGon

Why would anyone voluntarily engage with Dropbox, knowing how impossible they make it to disengage . . . This is a scam.

lunabass

I dropped Dropbox Pro in favour of Google Drive due to issues with external drives. Google handles external drives much better IMO.

Audio and video professionals need to use externals, sometimes we need to unmount them for transfers etc. It would be nice to be able to do that without thinking that Dropbox is going to register all files as being deleted.

Honestly, I'd sign back up if you could work out a better solution.

abzalsl80

http://nionsoftware.com/dbpahk/support

Here is a portable version of DropBox. I installed it on my office computer. Works very well. After installing it on your computer and creating the DropBox folder, you can copy the program to your hard drive and start synchronization. All of your files will be transferred to your hard drive.

rafest

This is an old question and it wasn't really resolved to my satisfaction until I answered the question myself. My issue was, I wanted to download some very large files directly to a hard drive. On many sites, when you click on download, you get a navigation window asking you where you want to download the files to. Dropbox doesn't do that. It defaults to your downloads folder. Now, my computer's internal drive hasn't got much space left and it definitely can't handle downloading all the files I need to get onto the hard drive, so I need to bypass the computer altogether. The answer lies in determining what the default downloads folder is for your browser. It is usually the Downloads folder. But you can temporarily change that. Go into your browser's preferences (make sure your hard drive is connected and powered up) then change the default downloads folder to the hard drive. Now, any files or folders you click on in Dropbox will download directly to your hard drive. Once you're done, change your default downloads folder back to where you had it. Done-zo!