Am I backing my content to Dropbox, or my hard drive?

Question

I'm struggling with Dropbox and my hard drive.  When I open Windows Explorer, on the left window (Navigation Pane), I see:  Dropbox, iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, This PC, and Network.  The Dropbox folder contains all files I expected to see there.  Now when I open "This PC" and then C:\users\******\Dropbox, that second Dropbox folder contains all the same files.  Am I backing up to my hard drive and not Dropbox?  I'm a little worried because I'm now to 75GB left on my hard drive.  I open the Dropbox desktop app in the System tray and it shows the same files there also.  I apologize if this seems to be a dumb question….

Hannah · Answer

Hi there, @bjvd, thanks for your reply!

That indeed looks like the correct location for your Dropbox folder.

You can also find the location of your Dropbox folder from the "Sync" tab in the Dropbox desktop app preferences.

I hope this helps!

bjvd · Answer

is this what you would expect to see when looking at the Properties/Location of the Dropbox folder (c:\users\bjvd)?  Thank you for all the other explanations!

Megan · Answer

Hi there, @bjvd, welcome to our Community!

Don't worry about it at all; there are no silly questions around here. ☺️ It will be my pleasure to explain how our desktop app works.

Apologies for the lengthy response, as I just want to be sure I cover all of your concerns.

When using our desktop app, a Dropbox folder is created locally on your device, and all of your Dropbox content is stored within it. If you choose for those files and folders to be stored locally, they will also use your computer's hard drive space. For that reason, if you need to have all of your content synced locally, you must have enough available space on your device.

Now, here is the catch: you can always use selective sync. You can essentially remove selected folders so that they do not take up any hard drive space. However, you won't be able to see these hidden folders inside your local Dropbox folder, but you can easily adjust your selective sync settings and sync them back to your device whenever you need to.

The alternative is to make files or folders online-only. That way, they will exist locally but as lightweight placeholders. You would simply need to change them to "available offline" whenever you require access to them.

Lastly you also mentioned a "second" Dropbox folder but I think you're referring to the actual path that the folder is located inside your File Explorer, right?

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to let me know more! I hope this clarified things.