Child Item

Recommendations for OSX Migration Assistant and the selective sync conflicts that might occur.

Device
OSX Mac Mini
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)
MacOS Sequoia
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)
231.4.5770
Syncing Status
Up to Date

Question or Issue
I recently used the OS X Migration Assistant moving from a Mac mini M2 to a Mac mini M4. I left my Dropbox account as-is and let Apple do the migration, which has caused Selective-Sync Conflicts.

In reading through the forums, I see that using the Migration Assistant isn't recommended for Dropbox accounts. What I'm wondering is what we should do, as Dropbox customers, when preparing to use Migration Assistant.

I feel like the safest method would be to sign out of Dropbox, uninstall it, and remove everything, then run Migration Assistant with the new machine, then log back into Dropbox on the new machine, and sign in and turn on Selective-Sync. This would likely be the most fool-proof way to ensure that no Selective-Sync conflicts would occur, and would be safest for mission-critical files and workflows. It does however produce a significant amount of churn and data usage for both myself and for the Dropbox agent and company.

Having said that, I would propose there be an article in the Help section that makes those recommendations.

Without those instructions, I imagine that most users will not pro-actively follow those steps and will end up in a situation where an enormous amount of Selective-Sync Conflicts must be resolved manually. The Selective-Sync Conflict resolution unfortunately puts a fairly large burden on the customer, which is warranted, but in doing so, puts them in a situation where a lot of folders at the root level are likely to be intentionally deleted in ways that Dropbox is designed to interpret as user-driven deletions. These could ultimately lead to a permanent loss of data, and are prone to duplication and an increase in storage costs and computational overhead at best.

The responsibility is on the customer to inspect each folder and its subfolders for contents. While that will take time for many customers, it is the necessary step when this migration inadvertently creates the situation.

A helpful addition to the Selective-Sync Conflicts might be a "Selective-Sync Conflict Remediation" tool. One that can identify all top level folders that are marked as Selective-Sync Conflicts, and shows which of those folders and it's subfolders contain no files, along with a pointer to the origin folder and a view of the files that it does contain.

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Comments

Megan

Hey there, @Brock A.1, thanks for posting here today!

I will pass on your comments to the relevant departments so that we can further improve, and to ensure that your voice is heard.

Having said that, can you clarify if you've taken a look at the relevant Help Center article here?

Also, did you manage to resolve your selective sync conflicts, and if so what steps did you follow?

Let me know more, thanks!

Brock A.1

Thanks Megan. That article is helpful to an extent, perhaps in understanding the mechanics of what may be happening during the Migration Assistant.

I did resolve all of my sync conflicts. In my case, there were few files in the conflicted folders, so it meant removing them from the Dropbox website and letting those changes populate to synced devices. If I had to guess, I had probably 20-40 folders at the top level of my account that were marked as sync conflicts. Of those, many had subfolders. Most that had subfolders did not contain any files. Some of the root folders contained actual files, so I checked for the original folder and found that these were duplicated files and felt confident deleted the conflict folder.

It isn't a challenging process, but it is one that requires a fair amount of care in attempting to locate then compare the original folders to the newly created "conflict folders", then requires taking the time to ensure that I'm comfortable with deleting the conflicted folder. I've been using Dropbox for many years, and have run into this issue on other machines and different operating systems, and it never is very straightforward. But I've found that if I neglect it when it happens, it can lead to a pretty disorganized root folder and a lot of duplicate folders.

Megan

Hey @Brock A.1, thanks for the heads up!

I've noted your request, and will make sure it's reviewed by our team. While we can't promise anything, it's input like yours that helps shape our roadmap.

We love hearing how we can make things better, and your ideas and thoughts are always more than welcome.

If you need something else, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help every step of the way.