Does anybody know of a process for placing or moving, and sensible specs for setting up, dropbox files on a drive that is not the main drive of the computer? When I originally set it up on my desktop (240 GB main SSD and two 3 TB HDDs), I was directed to put the files on my main drive.

I've been using it to sync My Documents and other data between my laptop and my Desktop, both of which use Windows 7.

However, I share A LOT of files. I've got 123 GB of files in my dropbox folder.

That means I only have about 16 GB free on the SSD. It's unclear whether I can move the dropbox files to a different drive. Dropbox has provided this as an aid, but it's self-contradictory: [Link: dropbox.com]. Reading it all, you see that one thing it says is that an external drive is one of the better ways to use dropbox, but they won't support that. This is after telling me that it won't work right if the files are not available. Well... what software works right if the files are not available?

What started all this was my trying to move the files to an internal 3TB HDD where I have plenty of room, which would take my available space on the SSD from 16 GB up to almost 140 GB. During that process, I get a message saying "There's already a copy of [file name] here." It doesn't identify "here," and I can only find one copy of that file in the originating files.

After trying seven times to move the files, I asked dropbox about this and they told me to be sure I was following the instructions on the web page I linked to above. That is either confusing, contradictory, or both.

Hence my question. Anyone?

Thanks.

Hi,

From the Dropbox taskbar icon right click and find the little ""settings" icon in the upper right.

Click on that, then click on "Preferences".

Now click on the "Sync" tab.

At the bottom of the Sync page I have a setting to specify where on my computer I want my Dropbox folder to be.

Does that setting not work? I did not try it as I didn't want to actually move all of my files.

Frederick

Always had mine on a secondary internal drive and never had an issue with operation. Link appears to be cautioning about external drive that may not always be live. Should move over like Frederick said.

Reminder you can also use selective sync for laptops with smaller drives and go to the cloud when necessary for the other files.

I did exactly what fcwilt listed. Every time, I got a message labeled ERROR with the detail that there was already a copy of a particular Quickbooks file "here." It did not define "here," but I took it to mean "in the target location."

It was always the same file name and I could only find one copy of it in the original file, and no copy of it in the target location.

Clicking on OK, the box disappeared and the move was cancelled. Anything that had been moved stayed in the target location, but the amount of space occupied by dropbox in the original location stayed the same. That is, things were copied but not eliminated from the original.

Hi,

Well I went ahead and tried it.

The existing location was c:\users\my_user_name\dropbox.

I selected the new location to be on drive d:\

It accepted the new location, created d:\dropbox and moved all the files.

I did pause syncing first just because it seemed like a good idea.

Frederick

Ernie, I used to have small-ish SSD drive like yours.
I had to recreate users folders including Dropbox to secondary drive.
Even with all that it was always a PITA because some programs would precisently look at C drive for files.

Few months ago I got an email from Amazon for a well priced 2TB SSD drive. Best thing ever!
Micron 1100 MTFDDAK2T0TBN-1AR1ZABYY 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive [Link: amazon.com]

Thanks, everyone.

I have done this probably a dozen times now, and every time it hangs up saying a copy of some Quickbooks file is already here.

So... last night I removed all the Quickbooks files from my dropbox and tried it again. I left it running during the night, and something or other crashed.

I also thought pausing sync would be a good idea. And the instructions on line, and the instructions I got directly from Quickbooks, were incorrect!

They said: Click Sync (on macOS you’ll first need to click Preferences…), then proceed from there.

I found that also, with Windows 7, you first have to click on Preferences to get to where you can click on SYNC. It is just so hard to trust instructions when they come from the manufacturer and even they don't know exactly what to do!