How to manually copy my files to a local drive

Question

Except for a few sensitive documents, Dropbox is my default storage location, partly to use some data across Mac and Windows computers such as text notes and manuals, and partly to spare some computer drive space (although I only use about 39 GB). On my main Mac I manually copy local files to external drives, creating a new backup for every month. I would like to do the same with my Dropbox-stored files. These are a mix of "Online-only" and "Available offline" types.
I read somewhere that you can download Dropbox folders as Zip files in batches from less than 250 GB and 10,000 files (but unsure how this works). Would you recommend such a workflow for my backup need? Thanks for any advice.

Nancy · Answer

Thanks for posting your question here, @paul1755!

You can definitely do that. When downloading files/folders via your Dropbox web account (which has the 250GB download limit), you can select the destination folder to be your external hard drive.

The files you’ll download in bulk will be exported as a .zip file, which you can then manually unzip in your external hard drive.

Another option, if you'd like to copy your Dropbox files via the desktop app instead, would be make sure everything is available offline within your local Dropbox folder, and then copy them to your external drive, like you'd do with any other file on your computer.

If there’s something else you need help with, I’ll be right here.