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Dropbox sync with multiple drives/folders for a single account.

Hello,

What I'm looking for is a way for Dropbox sync to manage multiple drives in a single account. (i.e. with a portable SSD in addition to my laptop's internal SSD as well)

In my use case, I want to maintain my local (internal) drive as the main Dropbox location that'll sync continually (essentially every day), but I'd like to use a portable SSD as an additional backup, which will periodically be connected to the computer to sync with Dropbox.

Also, should such a function get made, is it possible to do this without pushing all the files from the cloud to the hard drive and be able to directly copy them over to the external SSD (at least for the initial synchronization)?

Thank you,
Jordan

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Neal

Hi @JordanR,

No worries at all, let me explain:

Dropbox’s desktop app supports only a single watched folder per installation—typically on your internal drive. You can't configure it to monitor and sync two different local directories (e.g. both your internal SSD and a portable SSD) directly.
You can choose which folders sync on each device using Selective Sync, but that's not what you’re after here. That controls which parts of your Dropbox cloud data appear on each device, not where Dropbox actively syncs from your local system.

I hope this clears things up.

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Dell_Dropbox

I've seen this Idea come up on occasion, but unfortunately it hasn't been able to get enough support from the community to push it into the next stage of consideration.

Until then, the Dropbox backups feature will be the best available option (acknowledging this isn't as great as a physical external hard drive).

Neal

Hi @JordanR,

Just wanted to weigh in here. As well as what @Dell_Dropbox has mentioned, this simply is not possible.

You can read why on this related post I saw a short while ago.

JordanR

Hi Neal,

Could you explain how it's not possible? I'm pretty sure I can use my backup laptop and plug in my backup hard drive to it and do effectively what I'm describing here (It requires two laptops, but the outcome is the same).

Thank you,

Jordan

Neal

Hi @JordanR,

No worries at all, let me explain:

Dropbox’s desktop app supports only a single watched folder per installation—typically on your internal drive. You can't configure it to monitor and sync two different local directories (e.g. both your internal SSD and a portable SSD) directly.
You can choose which folders sync on each device using Selective Sync, but that's not what you’re after here. That controls which parts of your Dropbox cloud data appear on each device, not where Dropbox actively syncs from your local system.

I hope this clears things up.

JordanR

Hi Neal,

I appreciate the response.

I should've been more detailed in my response - is it not possible to update Dropbox at some point to achieve this? This doesn't seem to be that difficult to implement if Dropbox can synchronize between two different directories on two different computers.

Thank you,

Jordan

Dell_Dropbox

@JordanR That's a totally reasonable question.

While some changes may seem simple on the surface, when it involves reworking a core functionality of a product with millions of users things can get complicated under the hood.

To really get the ball rolling on something like this. One of the first steps would be a large enough segment of the community who are expressing a need for this kind of functionality. Feedback like yours really helps put things on the team’s radar when brainstorming what they might focus on next.

lava-lava

Dell_Dropbox wrote:
segment of the community who are expressing a need for this kind of functionality

Well, I want this functionality too. Sync 2 or more folders in a single device. It's for backup reasons. I want to backup password manager database to fist sync in my user folder inside Windows and the other in a flash drive syncing the same database file(This is needed if I lose access to my OS, dropbox and smartphone, I would still have a copy in a usb stick. Losing access to all might sound weird, but very possible). I managed to achieve the desired outcome using pcloud, but for my other files that shouldn't live in the same cloud account.

nvelis

I'm going to try using my backup laptop as a workaround but I would like to selectively sync the files I use regularly to my computer's internal drive and maintain a complete local backup of dropbox on an external drive. That should be possible.

Hannah

Hey @nvelis, thanks for the nudge.

When using the Dropbox app on your internal drive, you can definitely use selective sync to only sync the folders you want to access regularly and save hard drive space.

However, if you want a complete local backup of your Dropbox folder on an external drive, you can only do that manually.

You can see a clarification on how the Dropbox app works in Neal's reply here.

nvelis

Hi Hannah, thank you. If I install Dropbox desktop on a separate computer can I have different sync settings on that computer?

Mark

Yes you can