New MacBook Pro hard drive is full - but Nearly All Files on DropBox. Please Help!

Your Dropbox folder is part of your hard drive. Dropbox then syncs it to the cloud. All cloud storage services work this way.

Matt

Dropbox keeps a copy of all your files on your hard drive. (Otherwise you wouldn't be able to use them without internet connection.)

See the computer portion of this article -> What is "Other" and What Can I Do About It?.

Your disk is rather small so you should be careful about where you store your documents.

Good luck,

Clinton

MacBook Pro (15” Late 2011), OS X Yosemite 10.10.1, 16GB Crucial RAM, 960GB M500 Crucial SSD, 27” Apple Thunderbolt Display

You have a very small hard drive, and not enough free space for your computer to function well. You need an external hard drive. If you anticipate adding a lot more files, you can clone your existing system to the external, and then boot from it. Or you can shift some of the stuff that you currently store in Dropbox to a backup area on your external drive, and then cut down what you keep in Dropbox to contain ONLY the files that you need to be able to access when not at home. You can also change the location of your Dropbox folder, with the caveats noted at the bottom of the help article I have copied below:

From Dropbox Help:

How do I move my Dropbox folder to a new location?

You can move your Dropbox folder to any location on your hard drive using the Dropbox desktop application. If you decide to move the folder, we strongly recommend choosing a location on the same hard drive as your operating system. Dropbox won't work correctly should the Dropbox folder ever become inaccessible.

You can select the new location from the Dropbox desktop application preferences.

Using the Dropbox desktop application on Mac OS X

1. Click on the Dropbox icon from your menu bar.
   
   
   The Dropbox icon

   
   

2. Click on the gear icon and select Preferences... from the menu.
3. Click the Account tab.
4. Move the Dropbox folder location by selecting your folder from the drop-down menu labeled Dropbox location.
5. Let Dropbox move your folder and its contents to its new location.

Important: Your Dropbox folder will keep the same name as before and can't be changed by using the move feature. Dropbox will not sync your Dropbox folder if it has been manually renamed or moved through your operating system. If Dropbox loses track of your Dropbox folder, it will attempt to re-sync the folder in its entirety using its last known location.

Dropbox for Business users: If you've connected a personal and a work Dropbox, you'll see both of your Dropboxes listed here. Select the correct toggle before moving the Dropbox folder location.

For our advanced users

If you want to put your Dropbox folder on an external drive, proceed with caution:

• The Dropbox folder must be available when your computer boots and before the Dropbox desktop application starts. Some USB drives, for example, take some time to mount before your computer recognizes them. The Dropbox desktop application could start before such a drive is ready and get confused. You'll receive an error and Dropbox will give you the opportunity to relink your Dropbox account or exit if it is unable to find your Dropbox folder.
• If the external drive is disconnected from the computer while Dropbox is running, there's a small chance that the application will start deleting files before realizing that the entire drive has been removed. Again: When it comes to using an external drive for your Dropbox folder, tread carefully.

Dropbox creates a local copy on your hard drive of everything you have stored in the cloud. The copy is created locally, then uploaded, meaning you then have two. Any other devices you link download it and create their own local copy. That's where your space went