Syncing large volume of slightly modified files, music tagging

Question

I have an extensive music collection stored in my Dropbox account, consisting of approximately 30,000 tracks, predominantly in the classical and jazz genres. I plan to edit or update the metadata tags of these files to improve the organization and accessibility of my collection. My workflow is as follows:

1. I copy the files from my Dropbox folder to a local folder on my computer.
2. I use MusicBrainz Picard to edit or update the tags.
3. I then copy the updated files back to their original location in my Dropbox folder.

I have several questions regarding how Dropbox will handle these changes:

1. Will editing tags on these music files trigger a full re-upload of each file, or does Dropbox utilize block-level synchronization to sync only the changed parts of the file (in this case, the tags)?
2. Does editing tags on such a large number of files significantly impact my storage quota or synchronization times?
3. Are there any specific best practices or recommendations from Dropbox to maximize the efficiency of this process, given my use case?

Any insights or advice on how to best approach this task with minimal disruption and maximum efficiency would be greatly appreciated.

Mark · Accepted Answer

Hi @AlexSlaets

Dropbox does have block upload capability in that it uploads in 4mb blocks, but, that means if the file is less than 4mb in size it'll upload the whole thing again.

Also you may find it does that if you download and reupload. You'd be better off editing the files within the Dropbox directory so they are only changing once.