Dropbox is not uploading or uploading very slowly

Hey @walwar,

Let me send over some more details and tips to determine the cause!

For starters, you may have a look here for some steps to adjust your bandwidth locally.
Secondly, you could try force quitting all other applications and see if this helps improving your syncing speed.
Also, let me ask you whether you’re in a work or home environment.
You could use the link below to check your connection speed through your ISP and local network by using the following link: http://www.speedtest.net/

I’ll be following-up here, so please keep me updated in your reply!

All comments

AC1962

I have 2x separate Dropbox Pro accounts (personal + work); run from different PC’s but both connected to the same ISP service.

My 1st Dropbox Pro account (personal; Windows 10) contains >600Gb. It was setup about 4mth ago and initial upload was completed within <10days. It has subsequently worked great!

However, I've recently opened a 2nd Dropbox Pro account (work; Windows 7) and have been trying to complete an initial upload of 315Gb for the last 5 weeks. Unbelievably, it’s still not yet complete. My on-line tested ISP upload speed is quite fast, consistently testing out at ~12Mbps over the last 5 weeks. Yet, after the 1st few days Dropbox upload speed reduced significantly, to at worst an average of 0.1Gb per day after initial 10 days, where it then stayed for almost 2 weeks. During this time my PC was left permanently connected and not used – thinking this would help (more fool me). I checked Dropbox help and tried out what was suggested, with virtually no improvement at all. I contacted Dropbox Support, who were frankly useless: at best suggesting I check the same help pages I had already checked; at worst ignoring my emails.

I eventually talked to my ISP who confirmed that my available upload speed was correct and suggested that the most likely source of slow upload speed is that Dropbox are automatically throttling-back on my upload speed, simply because I am currently uploading constantly. Therefore over the last week, I have routinely re-booted my PC each day, gradually increasing the PC down-time and disconnection time from Dropbox. Eureka! the upload speed has significantly increased. Today after a PC down time of 6hrs, Dropbox upload speed increased to >20Gb in ~12hrs. Hopefully, once initial upload is complete (only 18Gb left) this 2nd Dropbox Pro account will perform similar to my 1st account.

I hope my above experience may help others.

AC1962

Following on from my previous message. After some further testing I now believe that Dropbox Pro initial upload/download speeds can dramatically slow-down if any of your file paths are too long: i.e. exceed Window limit of 255 characters.

My 'work' Dropbox Pro account did have several file paths that exceeded the 255 limit. Mainly due to imported nested folders and descriptive, but long, file names.

An easy way to check and resolve this issue is to: download TLPD – really simple portable free software; run TLPD to check you drives for file paths >255 characters; if any found, manually edit all excessive file paths to be <255 characters. Ideally, do this before initial Dropbox upload/download to 1st PC.

Also, as before, reboot PC once every 24hrs until initial upload/download is complete.

I hope the above is of help to others.

MarkLee

Had this problem with Dropbox years ago. Our company had to cancel Business plan because of slow speeds. Now several years later we try to give Dropbox a chance. But no, the problem is still there. All other cloud services upload at 2-5 MByte/s. Dropbox uploads at 70 KByte/s (sometimes picking at 2 MByte/s for only a couple of secs). 😂 Gonna cancel again.

Jeff N.3

Yep, unfortunately I still have this problem as well. I get ~100mbit/s on Dropbox, and I typically get anywhere from 500-700mbit/s on google drive. Unforunately, I still need to use dropbox because there are other features I rely on.

I had a 5 week game of ping-pong going with dropbox support before they finally gave up and said, in not so many words "We don't know what is wrong, but you are getting an 'acceptable' level of service, so we can't help you"

Such is how it goes, I guess.

I'm sure someone, somewhere at dropbox knows what the issue is, but it isn't something they want to disclose to the public. Guess I just have to keep waiting for their tech to catch up...

Zed

Hey @jeanzbeanz,

Can you please try refreshing your Dropbox installation on your device by running the installer from here ?

This could resolve this.

Let me know if it works, I'll be around to help!

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond!

I have tried your suggestion and ONE photo uploaded... and unfortunately it seems to be stuck again

Any other ideas?

Jeff N.3

This is the first time I have seen Dropbox publicly acknowledge the issue and announce plans to fix it!

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/19/dropbox-announces-massive-network-expansion/

Hey @jeanzbeanz,

Thanks for the follow-up!

I can see that you’ve troubleshooting with a coleeague via ticket and they has replied to you there. At your convenience, could you check your inbox for this message and let me know if you have any issues locating their message, so that I make sure that you receive it again?

Hope this gets resolved soon!

Warm regards,

JaneA

meljaxx

This fixed my problem!!

Zed

@meljaxx Yay!

Gunnerman

This works until you need to upload a file or directory that is larger than a few hundred MB in size.

Sorry I haven't seen the ticket - if you could resend to [Personal Information removed by @Jane] that would be helpful!

A handful of photos have uploaded today... but still going EXTREMELY slow.

Hey @jeanzbeanz,

Thanks for the update!

Please keep in mind that, for security reasons, I had to remove your personal information from the thread. Please avoid sharing any identifiable information here in the future, since this is a public Forum.

Other than that, we've made sure to reply to your open ticket. Have you been able to receive our message? Please keep in mind that our team is not allowed to email a different email address, other than the one the user has been writing in from, for security reasons. If you experience difficulties locating our correspondence, though, please let me know here.

Warm regards,

JaneA

Hi, I'm still having issues

I haven't had time to trawl through the 20 pages of responses on this thread - I suspect most of them are users saying "me too"!

To give you some kind of idea how slow it's going, my computer has been on all this time and is now at 345 files...

Hey @jeanzbeanz,

Sorry to hear that... I'm here for you and I'd be more than glad to help you, though.

Because I understand that you'd like some personalised troubleshooting, I have made sure to get back in touch on your open ticket. Have you been able to receive my latest reply there?

If you haven't located the reply, please give me a nudge here, so that I make sure that you receive it again.

Thanks again for your patience, I hope this gets resolved soon!

Warm regards,

JaneA

Hi, will reply to the ticket. Still having problems

Hey @jeanzbeanz,

Thanks for the follow-up, I'm on it and I've made sure it'll be looked into by a specialist! Please have a look at your inbox and let me know if you haven't received our latest reply.

Warm regards,

JaneA

terry03

Got no time for dat!

Simple Solution!

I just switched to Google Drive!

NihontoEurope

20 pages in the thread and no solution?

Mark

Dropbox is currently having known server issues. See https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Error-messages/Server-Error-message/m-p/230069#M12758

Hello,

I'm unable to update my initial post on here and nobody is replying to my ticket #5997163.

This issue has been ongoing for weeks now and I am absolutely sick of it.

Can someone please help or else I have no choice but to use a different cloud storage - I urgently need to be able to save my clients' photographs securely!

Hey @jeanzbeanz,

I appreciate your frustration, since we 've worked on that together and this needed more advanced troubleshooting. I’ve made sure to forward your comments to our team specialist, who is working with you on your open ticket, so that they get back in touch as soon as possible there.

I have also transferred your post on your original thread and ensured that this has been open to commenting.

Thank you for your ongoing cooperation and patience on the matter. Hope that this gets resolved soon for you!

Warm regards,

JaneA

Thanks for your reply; however I am not impressed with the lack of response to the ticket. It's not acceptable to treat paying customers like this and expect them to carry on paying!

Please also pass on that I have been able to upload a large video file to dropbox by using the web uploader. It is clearly just a problem with the desktop app that's causing issues.

Hi, I'm getting no response to my ticket. Is there a number I can call?

If it wasn't for the fact that I can't get google drive to work on my phone I would have switched weeks ago...

I am a Very unhappy Pro customer.

What a coincidence, when I post on here Frank suddenly responds to my ticket.

Unfortunately the response was unhelpful as ever... so I have no option now but to look into another cloud storage solution

Can anyone recommend one which is reliable? I need approx 750MB-1TB.

I have exactly the same issues.

Dropbox takes forever to start, at least a few hours and sometimes more than a day.

And when it finally works, it's unbelievably SLOW...

After 24 hrs of stand alone syncing it has about 10.000 files done and then it just starts allover again...

I keep getting the same numbers of files being indexed and synced again and again.

I have complained and asked for help but they just give me standard BS-answers.

appearently they just don't care for customers who have already paid them good money so we end up with a product that just won't work properly anymore.

It's not our computers or networks that cause this problem, it's the lazy people at dropbox that just don't care.

I therefore decided to end my PRO-subscription after about 5 years.

If myself and everybody else with these same problems are not important enough for them to fix this problem than they don't deserve my business/money.

Luckily there are plenty of other cloud services!

just more bull**bleep**!
it's not our machines that cause this problem.
droop takes out money and hides under a rock.
i've ended my subscription.

I have exactly the same issues.

Dropbox takes forever to start, at least a few hours and sometimes more than a day.

And when it finally works, it's unbelievably SLOW...

After 24 hrs of stand alone syncing it has about 10.000 files done and then it just starts allover again...

I keep getting the same numbers of files being indexed and synced again and again.

I have complained and asked for help but they just give me standard BS-answers.

appearently they just don't care for customers who have already paid them good money so we end up with a product that just won't work properly anymore.

It's not our computers or networks that cause this problem, it's the lazy people at dropbox that just don't care.

I therefore decided to end my PRO-subscription after about 5 years.

If myself and everybody else with these same problems are not important enough for them to fix this problem than they don't deserve my business/money.

Luckily there are plenty of other cloud services!

try idrive.
they ofter offer cheap starting rates like 2TB for less than $10 the first year...