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Trying to download a large file (80Gb) from shareable link, but only 39 Gb downloads every time.

Hi all.

I am in desperate need of help with a Dropbox issue. My client is trying to share a 4k large file with me (it's a video file of 90Gb). We both have Essential plans on Dropbox. She has successfully uploaded it at her end and shared the link with me and I can open the link and play it and view it, but when I click to download it just downloads to 39Gb and then stops. I have adequate space on my Mac (it has 240Gb free, of a possibly 495Gb). I have tried in Chrome and Safari, both a number of times. I also have very high speed internet. I am at a total loss as to the issue, has anyone had this before or knows how to solve it? Many thanks.

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Rich

@sophiepajak123 wrote:
... when I click to download it just downloads to 39Gb and then stops.

If you have an Essentials account with enough space in your account, use the Save to Dropbox option to save the file to your account, then allow it to sync to your computer through the Dropbox application. It's much more efficient and will pick up where it left off in the event that it's interrupted.

sophiepajak123

Thank you so much for your reply Rich! I've managed to save it to my Dropbox - thank you! How do I allow it to sync through my computer? I've not done that before.

Thank you again!

Rich

@sophiepajak123 wrote:
How do I allow it to sync through my computer? I've not done that before.

Do you have the Dropbox application installed on your computer? If so, it's probably already syncing. If not, install the Dropbox application and a Dropbox folder will be created on your local drive. Your files will sync down to the computer. You can use Selective Sync or Online-only to control what data actually resides on your local drive.

sophiepajak123

Hi Rich

I didn't have the application installed, but I just went and did it now. While it was installing it did come up with the option to sync my dropbox and I clicked to say yes but it came up saying:

Choose folders to see on this computer
Selected folders will live on this computer. Unselected folders will appear only on dropbox.com.
No folders in your Dropbox (and an empty window, even though the file is now in my Dropbox folder online.)

When I click on the Dropbox icon in my Finder on my Mac, I can see the file there and there is a little blue icon next to it with two arrows on it (implying Sync) so perhaps it is syncing at the moment? But the size of the file says Zero bytes.

Do you know if this is successfully syncing? Thank you!!

Nancy

Hey @sophiepajak123! Sorry for jumping in. If you see this icon, it means that the file is still in the process of syncing indeed.

Are you still seeing the same icon now? If yes, can you clarify the current syncing status of your Dropbox app?

sophiepajak123

Hello! I wonder if anyone can help me. I am trying to get a large file from a client (it is 159Gb.) I have enough space on my laptop, I've cleared almost 200Gb or approx 450Gb available space.

After issues downloading a similar file (albeit smaller) from her last week, someone here in this community helpfully told me to download the desktop version of Dropbox and sync files, and amazingly this worked. However, with this larger one, the progress bar on the syncing doesn't seem to be moving, and when I hover over the icon it says 2+ days. Is there anything I can do to make this go quicker?

Also, when I go to play the file within my dropbox account online, I get the error message "mov files are supported but something went wrong." I didn't get this message when I played the previous file from my client (the one that went on to successfully sync) so that's made me concerned that there's a larger issue at play here and that the file won't ever successfully sync.

Is anyone able to shed some light on what might be the issue here?

Thank you! Sophie x

Nancy

Hey Sophie, since this is a large file indeed, the Dropbox app will need some time to sync it locally on your computer. Do you still not see any kind of progress on the Dropbox app?

I’d also suggest leaving your computer on in the meantime, if that’s possible, so that the syncing isn’t interrupted.

As for the file not previewing online, this sounds expected. In general, a video file needs to be smaller than 100GB for it to preview/play on www.dropbox.com.

sophiepajak123

Thanks Nancy that's really helpful.

Since posting on here, it seemed the sync had got stuck (the bar wasn't moving and the counter wasn't moving down at all), so I restarting my computer (as i read on here that sometimes helps) and when I opened Dropbox again (desktop version,) instead of saying 2 days it said 4 hrs and was counting down, so that felt like a breakthrough.

However - my available storage had all of a sudden gone down from 200Gb to 40Gb. So although it was syncing, I was worried this would ultimately mean the sync/download wouldn’t complete as not adequate space. I tried clearing some other files on my laptop and managed to get my storage space up to 95Gb, but again, the syncing then seemed to stop (it still had the blue syncing icon but the counter wasn't going down.) so I then paused the sync, and restarted it to see if this would kickstart it again, and as feared, I got an error msg saying not enough space on my device.

This was so confusing as I originally had enough space (200Gb) before attempting to get this file, but it seemed the unsuccessful syncing attempts were taking up space on my laptop.

After doing some research I saw that 'Dropbox' on my laptop was taking up 171.65Gb of space and that it could be down to caches, so i deleted these files, and thankfully got back up to 240Gb storage space again.

So, I'm back to having adequate space on my laptop now, and have restarted syncing. And thankfully the counter seems to be going down and it's saying 3 hours (not 2+ days!) But my storage on my laptop automatically went from 240Gb to 98Gb the minute I started syncing. I assume this is because it's already using the storage for the file it's syncing, but it's saying it's got 130Gb left to sync on the counter (it's slowly counting down) so I am very concerned that because my laptop is saying i've only got 90Gb available, i will once again run into issues and be told I don't have enough space.

Does anyone know what I can do in this instance? I am at a total loss as even if i have adequate space for the sync/download, I then seem to lose all this space the minute i start to sync, which then means the sync fails. Any help would be so welcome, thank you.

Nancy

Hmm, can you send me a screenshot of what you see when checking your computer’s hard drive space?

Do you have any other folders on your Dropbox account that you don't need to have synced locally?

sophiepajak123

Hi all

I have been trying to sync and download a large file (approx 160Gb) from a client for 4 days now and hitting numerous roadblocks. Before my most recent attempt, I had a total of 240Gb available space on my laptop (of an overall hard drive size of 400ish), but now, after the unsuccessful sync, I only have 100Gb available. I assume this is because the unsuccessful attempt is still taking up space on my hard drive in the form of caches etc, but I can't find out how to delete this and regain the storage space back. I'm desperate to attempt the sync and download again but can't without freeing up this space so I'm back up to 240Gb. If anyone can advise me how to delete these hidden files that would be amazing - thank you! I am using a Mac.

Thank you!

sophiepajak123

Just to elaborate on this - I have followed these steps suggested here - https://help.dropbox.com/delete-restore/cache-folder - and when I did this a few days ago I could see lots of large files there I then deleted, but this time when I try it only shows cache files amounting to 55ish Mb, so not the 140Gb that I'm looking for (as I had 240Gb before I started the sync/download process yesterday.) Thank you!

Nancy

Hey Sophie, can you follow the steps below and send me a screenshot of what you see?

Click the Dropbox icon in your menu bar.
Click your avatar (profile picture or initials).
Click Manage hard drive space from the dropdown menu to open the tool.

DBX_Pedro

Hi @sophiepajak123,

Sorry to jump in the post. Can you confirm if this issue persists?

We can take it from there.