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Save hard drive space automatically - Fires Aggressively after 5 minutes of non-use?

Hello,

I turned on "save hard drive space automatically", however, after just 5 minutes of non-use, it's moving files back to the cloud. Shouldn't this feature leave commonly accessed files on my harddrive? It's very frustrating to wait 5-10 seconds for the file to download to my computer 4-10 times in the same hour while I'm doing video editing, just because the file wasn't used in the last 5 minutes. Is this feature really supposed to re-download the same file multiple times in the same hour just because it wasn't accessed for a couple minutes? I might have to go back to permanently keeping all files on my hard drive if I can't get this feature to work better. Minimally, I would want accessed files to stay on my hard hard drive for at least a day, but ideally they would stay for a week or even a month.

Any ideas? Is there some configuration change I can do so that dropbox will keep files on my hard drive longer than 5 minutes? Or is this just a fluke of brand new files? These files are freshly downloaded from a camera, and dropbox keeps deleting them from the hard drive for "cloud only" every 5 minutes, which causes me to re-download the same video clip from the internet 4-8 times in the same hour, which takes 5-10 seconds per clip each time. Help!

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Hannah

Strange that the app is ignoring your settings too, @contactmike1.

Can you please restart your computer, then select the whole Dropbox folder, set it to available offline and see if the issue persists?

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Walter

Hi there @contactmike1, thanks for using Dropbox and welcome to the Community.

Could you let us know the OS version of your computer and the current version and status of the desktop app as shown in your menu bar/system tray?

Are you noticing this only on a particular type of files or are others affected as well?

Any additional information you can share will be more than welcome!

contactmike1

Hi @Walter,

It's a new computer with windows 11. Dropbox was installed yesterday or sunday, v182.4.6427.

I did not seem to have this problem on my other computer....my old computer seemed to retain files on the hard drive for months. Since it's a new computer, I don't know if it happens with other file types, or just the .movs from my iphone. It's possible this will calm down to normal behavior after a few days, maybe?

I did change the settings back to "off" and "available offline", but dropbox seems to be ignoring that change so far and is still pushing all my .movs to "online line" every 5 minutes, even with the new settings applied. So, something seems off with the installation perhaps.

The dropbox status is "up to date" although it was syncing the large library to my computer in the last few days. But that is finished now and it says up to date.

Hannah

Strange that the app is ignoring your settings too, @contactmike1.

Can you please restart your computer, then select the whole Dropbox folder, set it to available offline and see if the issue persists?

contactmike1

So I didn't reboot yet, but:

1. Manually setting a folder offline DOES respect the setting, and it downloads all files and sub folders.

2. Checking other video editing folders that i haven't used in the last week, dropbox does appear to be keeping files properly. Edits from an 8/20 show are "only online", which i would expect since they haven't been opened in multiple weeks. Items which I've worked on the first two weeks of September, dropbox has kept those files on the harddrive. Both of these files are mixed in the same folder, and most of 8/20 show content is "online only" and most of the 9/17 show content is still on the harddrive. This is exactly what I would have expected dropbox to do.

3. The only place where I saw the 5 minute issue was on a brand newly created folder with brand new videos downloaded off a camera. I can't replicate the issue anywhere else. So perhaps there is a bug or error with the handling of brand new files -- or -- my dropbox installation simply had a malfunction on that directory.

Update: So changing the directory to "make available offline" works fine and it downloads all the videos. If i change the setting back, it immediately reverts back to cloud only. When i watch a video it downloads, and within 5 minutes after, goes back to cloud only again. I watched multiple videos, and they all changed back to cloud only in a few minutes. Time to test your reboot theory. I watched several videos at 11:19am and then rebooted. .

Update2: A reboot seems to have fixed the problem. Without reboot, i can replicate the issue and it keeps occurring. After reboot, if i watch a video, it stays on the hard drive for at least 1 hour now. Before, it was going back to cloud only within 5 minutes. So i think the software might have malfunctioned and a reboot fixed it. It will take more testing with new files to rule out a new file bug which takes a reboot to fix, but i don't have any new files to download to test it. For now, i think this issue can be closed.

Megan

Hey @contactmike1, thanks for all the updates!

By all means, feel free to keep an eye out, and let us know if you need anything else.