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Smart Sync storage issue on macOS Sierra 10.12- macOS High Sierra 10.13.3.

Fowzie T.

I'm really confused, the premise of smart sync is to free up local storage. This is a screenshot of a folder which contains about 2GB of data. Am I doing something wrong?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sjd34t39t0q7312/Screenshot%202017-02-18%2012.03.41.png?dl=0

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Jane

Howdy folks,

I’m @Jane, I’m working on the Community team at Dropbox & I’m posting here so as to stir this discussion towards a different route. Without further ado, I’m going to split this thread off into a number of different ones, as I’d like to avoid any confusion in regards to the topic or the status of this conversation.

Why are you splitting the thread?

For context, this thread has been around since last February & a number of very separate (and now resolved) Smart Sync issues have been reported here. This separation was triggered as we like to group distinct issues together to better help users discover relevant content, advice and to help self-resolve.

Don’t worry, no information is being removed, we are however moving some posts into other threads & for that reason, I’m going to include links to all the new threads at the bottom here.

As an example, this thread contains a lot of information & troubleshooting around an issue we experienced on Mac OS 10.13.3, something now resolved. We wouldn’t want people on 10.13.4 to attempt troubleshooting steps that weren’t relevant to their current state.

But I still have my issue!

We’ve moved all the open discussions into separate threads listed at the bottom. Apologies if we missed yours! Regardless, anyone who has opened a ticket with Support, that ticket will remain open and is unrelated to this split.

So, has this been solved forever?

The initial behavior reported here has been, however this thread has become a single point for a vast number of other Smart Sync posts, some of which should have their own threads, some open, some now resolved.

Where do I post Smart Sync comments now?

Either in one of the below threads - or, if they don’t match the behavior you're getting, you may feel free to create a new one! :slight_smile: As this thread will remain public, you may also use it as a point of reference, so as to let us know of any troubleshooting steps you've followed from those mentioned above.

Thanks for your co-operation and please keep the discussion going in the below, or new, threads!

Storage Usage reported for online-only folders on Finder doesn't match the "User Info” here: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Storage-Usage-reported-for-online-only-folders-on-Finder-doesn-t/td-p/270125

Smart Synced files & folders set to Online Only but still taking up storage on macOS 10.13.4.: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Re-Smart-Sync-set-to-Online-Only-but-still-taking-up-storage-on/m-p/271195#M35882

Jane

For note, issues caught up in this thread, that should have had their own threads included:

Issue 1: I can’t enable Smart Sync at all:

Usually this was the result of an incorrect installation & in such cases, re-installing anew helped fix the issue. Alternatively, if you were running a Beta version of the Dropbox app on your desktop, you may need to check if this works on the most updated Stable version (Note: It's currently 48.4.58).
Status: :white_check_mark:

Issue 2: I’m on a Professional plan & I can’t get Smart Sync to work either:

Some users on the Professional plan were experiencing an issue utilizing Smart Sync, as they had needed to enable System Extensions previously, which has been documented on this resource.
Status: :white_check_mark:

Issue 3: I’ve made my files online-only, though they’re still using up my storage locally:

In some cases, users reported that Smart Synced files might be locally stored in the cache folder a little longer, hence taking up space. Clearing the cache folder should resolve this issue.
Status: :white_check_mark:

Jane

Issue 4: I followed the instructions on your resources & set up my files as online-only, though I can see that they’re still taking up space on my pc/ Mac.

The Properties (Win) and Get Info (Mac OS) panel will indicate the actual file size instead of the size on disk, as you may expect. “Size on disk” is the space being taken up by a placeholder file and should be around 0kb.
Status: :white_check_mark:

Issue 5: I can see that my Dropbox folder on my Mac OSX (v.42.4.114) reported file & folder size incorrectly, making it look like files were still residing on my hard disk.

After further investigation, we were able to determine that the Finder was showing the wrong size on disk for folders with compressed files.
Status: :white_check_mark:

Issue 6: I can’t back-up my online-only files on the TimeMachine migration assistant & whenever it tries to access them, this action brings them back locally.

This is related to the way TimeMachine reads file sizes and is an on-going issue, though this issue lies with Apple’s software. De-selecting the Dropbox folder when restoring if possible will work around this issue.
Status: :arrows_counterclockwise:

Issue 7: Third-party disk management apps report Smart Synced files are present locally.

Some third-party app may read the nominal file size rather than the physical size. This is not a Dropbox issue, but down to the way some apps are built.
Status: :white_check_mark:

That's all from me! As usual, I'll be around in case you'd need me to clarify matters in more detail, so feel free to ping me & I'll do my best to check back with you.

All comments

timrslater

I am on 10.13.1 and this still isn't working? I can't calculate how much storage I have on my Mac because dropbox online only items are being included...

Is this going to be fixed?

makedonetz

Same problem here! Any ideas how to fix this?

Size of dropbox folder 250GB, but size on a disk 83GB..

jdelamater

I have updated to 10.13 and still having the same issue. You can see Finder shows it's set to online only and it's taking space on the computer. What shall I do?

Screen Shot 2017-11-14 at 5.18.30 PM.png

Sanchez

Hi everyone,

I’m sorry that you are experiencing this. We have a new stable version of our desktop app, 39.4.49. Please make sure that you are running this version (not a beta), and if the issue persists, submit a support ticket here, so an agent can investigate further.

If you are on a beta build, it means that you have opted in to Early Releases in your online account settings. I recommend that you switch this off, and then install our stable build. A beta version is denoted by a xx.3.xx, instead of the xx.4.xx.

Thanks!

jquintanilla4

I'm having the same problem. I am on the latest MacOS release and on the latest stable Dropbox stable release. I've followed all the instructions regarding the extensions and allowing this and that to do its business. But I am still stuck with my whole dropbox 33GB folder, even though 95% percent has been marked as online-only. Oh and I've waited about a day for the dropbox desktop app to do its thing in the background and maybe delete the stuff that I marked online-only, because I read from some people on this thread that you just have to wait. But I'm still stuck with my full folder.

Help... When will this get fixed?

JohnDyer

@Sanchez, I'm on macOS 10.12.6 and Dropbox 39.4.49, but I'm having the same problem others have been reporting where folders marked as "Online" are still taking up space.

Is there any solution?

Jane

Hey @jquintanilla4 & @JohnDyer, let’s check what’s happening together & we’ll take it from there!

#1. @jquintanilla4 & @JohnDyer: To better determine the case, could you let me know what you can see once you double-click on the “Get Info” option on the Dropbox folder? As you’ve mentioned, you’ve made most of your files online-only, therefore these shouldn’t be taking as much space on your hard disc. I’d appreciate a screenshot of what you can see there, just so as to make sure I understand what you’re experiencing correctly.

#2. Please make sure to check this & this additional resources on Smart Sync and system extensions.

Looking forward to hearing back from you here!

JohnDyer

Thanks @Jane! Here's a screenshot showing that a folder is taking up > 200GB even though it's marked as "Online". I see that it's supposed to only be "201KB on disk" but it's still taking up the full 203.98 GB. Is there a trick to reconciling that?

Screen Shot 2017-11-17 at 4.23.46 PM-edit.png

jquintanilla4

Thanks @Jane. I've already followed both link tutorials that you sent before, but I just made sure again that everything was in order. No change.

Here are screenshots of what you asked for. Let me know if you need more information.

A big sized folder example that should not be that bigMy main Dropbox folder infoA screen shot of most of my Dropbox folder to show how much is actually being told to be online-only

AgusPrabowo

I used dropbox is smart synchrone the data. Thanks

idennis

So i'm having same problems with smartsync. Just installed a new ssd on my laptop so there is nothing on there.

Installed dropbox and all folders are ' now online only'. But it still takes up hd space, 25Gb arcording to de info.

I'm running OS 10.13.1 and dropbox app v39.4.49, please fix this. Just paid €199,- for this and it's not working !

Schermafbeelding 2017-11-18 om 21.28.06.png

Sanchez

Hey @idennis, welcome to the Dropbox community!

I’m sorry to hear that you’re experiencing this issue. I would really appreciate it if you submitted a ticket so that we can gather information specific to your case.

Thank you

idennis

@Sanchez: I allready made contact thru chat to find out what the problem is, your college is still looking for a anwser and he will email me back as soon as possible.

I did a liitle research myself:

- all my folders are set to 'online only'

- when you look at the info of the dropbox folder on my mac it's shows it's using 25Gb;

- when turn off wifi i can not open any documents from de dropbox folder;

- when i look at the info of usage from my hd is saying 145Gb of 240Gb still free space, so i'm using 95Gb;

- when i count the usage of everything: 52 (vm) +40 (doc) +12 (photo)+6 (app) +6 (icloud)+3 = 119Gb;

- So 119Gb - 95Gb = 24 Gb, that's also the amound of usage of the dropboxfolder;

So in short i think the dropbox folder is empty on my mac but OSX counts it with the total of usage (doc 40Gb) on my mac. I want to put more files on my dropbox but afraid that it will create problems on my mac, and slowing it down.

Think it's time for a update from apple/dropbox solving this problem.

Schermafbeelding 2017-11-22 om 08.03.50.png

Sanchez

Hey @idennis,

Thanks for getting back to me. I’m glad that you’re in communication with our support team, and I hope they get you something soon.

In the meantime, I’ve been discussing your case with my colleagues here, and those who use Macs confirm that the usage reporting by the operating system is notoriously “inaccurate”. They suggest clearing the computer’s cache (you’ll need to look up how this is done), as a way of resetting the usage report, to make it more accurate.

They also suggested that you check the size of the local Dropbox folder like this:

click on the Apple logo at the top left
click About this Mac
select Storage, then Manage
click on Documents in the left pane

choose the File Browser tab
find the Dropbox folder to see its size

By no means an I passing the blame to Apple here. I’m just trying to see how we can maybe get this to work a little better in the meantime.

I hope this helps.

Cheers!

cvonie

I am running 10.10.5.... how do i get drobox clunkiness off my hard drive?

fransg

I have the same issue here. Over the past 2 days I moved an approximate of 85GB set of picture folders to my Dropbox Professional. I set it to "Online only". When I started the upload I had a little over 300GB free space on my HD, and now that the folders are "online- only" the free space of my HD is just 235GB. I did restart the 2017 15" Macbook Pro (High Sierra 10.13.1).

How can I free up about 70GB of space that I 'lost' to files that are not supposed to take up space locally?

The "2016" folder that has been in Dropbox longer is fine, taking up hardly any space locally, by the way, see below:

fransg

PS 4 hours later, 10GB extra have been 'freed' on my HD. No activity to be seen on the Dropbox icon in the top of the screen but apparently somewhere in the background wheels are turning. Will be good to see the HD having 300GB free space again in Finder.

fransg

Thanks to Ken from support for his speedy email reply. He explains that the process takes some time to complete. "The best way to know if the syncing has been complete, is by looking at the Dropbox icon in your taskbar (Windows) or menu bar (Mac) and see if it is done syncing. When Dropbox is fully synced then you should see a tick followed by the words Up to date on the menu."

I checked and it does show (in Dutch) that it's "Up to date" ("Bijgewerkt") but in the background Finder is still slowly regaining space. Right now 20GB of the 85GB have been freed, after half a day. I can live with that slow recovery if it continues and if it completes eventually but I think communication by the Dropbox app should be more astute. "Up to date" should indicate "all done" or it should be telling me something like "clearing space now at 70%"

Would that be possible?

Schermafbeelding 2017-11-28 om 23.17.20.png

idennis

So stil having the same problems. I think that there is en problem with the software. Something that should be fixed asap.
On my laptop it still showing usage 24GB. So it’s not getting less over time.

fransg

Right now, 24 hours after finishing the upload, the HD is back to 305GB free space.

So I can say it works okay here, just slower and a little more mysterious than expected ;-)

fransg

PS and two days later, with all picture folders still online-only, 158GB of space is taken up locally by these files again, according to Finder... So there still must be a misunderstanding between Dropbox and Higfh Sierra, cropping up or disappearing without explanation.

Schermafbeelding 2017-12-01 om 09.29.58.png

Jane

Hey @fransg, I appreciate your detailed description of the issue here & I'd like to follow-up on the matter.

As you've mentioned that you've already raised a ticket with our team, could you include a ticket ID to reference in your reply here, so that I look it up internally and check back with my colleague?

Thanks in advance & I'm looking forward to hearing back from you!

Tambe257

FYI - I am running Sierra 10.12.6 and I have the same issue. In the screenshot below you'll see that the Mac says I have 165.91 GB available, but it also says that 331.48 GB of documents are on my HD. (398 GB HD total available) Almost all of the large files listed in teh image are stored online only.

Screen Shot 2017-12-04 at 8.55.00 PM.png

bn_2

Hi folks,

I work on Smart Sync. The Finder info panel has occaisonally had issues in the past (we're checking with the powers that be of a certain OS vendor for the recurrance of any issues). Things that would be helpful:

Are you running on APFS or any non-HFS+ filesystem?
When you run `du [relevant dropbox folder]` do you get back disk usage that agrees or disagrees with the Finder info panel?

Thanks in advance!

Tambe257

Hi bn,

I am still running Sierra, so I am using HFS+. For a folder containing file stored online only: Running du returns 0, which is correct. "ls" returns the file name. I ran a Grand Perspective scan as well and that looks like the files are stored locally. I don't know how Grand Perspective does their scans, but if it is a Finder issue, then it's not surprising that Grand Perspective also looks wrong.

Thanks,

Tony

cvonie

Thank you for responding. I am looking for direct support from DropBox, as the responses here are addressing issues that are different from what I am experiencing. My mac is older and running Yosemite 10.10.5. When trying to get DropBox files off my local hard drive, I do this... Screen Shot 2017-12-15 at 10.47.37 AM.png

Is there something else I should be doing? What am I missing? My local hard drive is at max capacity and from the way the others are talking, this should be easy enough to keep these files 'online only.' Help please! Gotta backup my phone and the computer is too overloaded loaded to do that...

Ross_S

Hi @cvonie,

Looks like you're hitting Selective sync conflicts. All those grey minuses...

https://help.dropbox.com/syncing-uploads/selective-sync-conflicts

If you resolve you selective sync conflict issues then you should start to see it behaving as expected.

fransg

I found something that may be of interest here.

I very rarely use Path Finder since originally it would not work with High Sierra and I got used to doing everything with OSX's Finder instead.

When I do open Finder and view a folder on Dropbox that is online-only, immediately all files in that folder will be downloaded to my local HD.

This is only visible when I open the Finder and watch what's happening in the folder that was moments before open in Path Finder.

I then immediately set that folder to online-only and all is corrected after some time has passed.

It may be a good idea to now use Path Finder at all for the time being.

I enclose information about the version of Path Finder that I have on my machine.

diamonte21

I'm having the same problem with Dropbox Professional. All my folders and files are set to "online only" (grey cloud) but it is still taking up the same space as a local file (green tick). I'm running macOS High Sierra v10.13.2 with only 120GB of storage space. My ticket reference is 7423104. I can no longer add anything to my 1TB Dropbox as it says I don't have enough hard drive space. So not only can I not use my laptop but I also can't use Dropbox. Really disappointed and I hope there's a quick solution.

Jane

Hey @diamonte21, I appreciate your detailed description of the issue & including your open request# in your post here. I hope you’ve spent a wonderful time during the holidays & I’m wishing you the best for 2018!

As I've located your support ticket on our system, I can see our colleague has replied to you there yesterday sending over some steps to follow & they're awaiting your reply, so that you proceed to resolution together. Please include all relevant info on what you’re experiencing (eg. any screenshots of the “Get info” window or other troubleshooting steps you’ve followed would be very useful) on this correspondence & they’ll make sure to follow-up with you as closely as possible.

At your convenience, could you check your inbox for our latest message and let me know here if can't find it, so that I make sure to send that again?

You can also reach back out here in case you need further assistance, just let me know in this discussion!

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