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when using a personal dropbox account, is it possible to use the mapped drive without downloading all my dropbox files to my hard drive as well?

When using a personal (not business) dropbox account on my mac book pro, is it possible to use the mapped drive only? Currently I have dropbox mapped to my computer but it is also saving a redundant copy of the data on my hard drive. My goal is to pull, edit and save files on the mapped drive only without having a redundant back up of all my dropbox files on my computer wasting valuable storage space. Any advice out there? Thanks in advance for your help!

Posted on Apr 16, 2015 11:19 AM

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4 replies

Apr 16, 2015 11:27 AM in response to aprince03

What do yo mean by 'mapped drive'?

That is a Windows term generally used for network drives, it is not how Dropbox works.


Dropbox stores data on the internal disk & copies changes to the online service. You can't avoid this. If you want to confrim this take the Mac offline - the files will still work with no internet connection - that is the point of Dropbox - locally saved files, synced to to cloud.



Please explain more if you are referring to some other network disk or external disk.

Apr 16, 2015 12:04 PM in response to aprince03

I don't believe that is accurate, but maybe I am missing something (I am not a Windows user).


Looking at 2 explanation of how to map a Dropbox as a drive…

http://lkeng.org/wp/?p=147

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d8uvseVr5A

Both of those are linking to the 'local copy' of Dropbox. It is not a true 'network' drive as far as I can see (it still requires the local copy on the PC).


Another video suggests using another service to mount the Dropbox, but that is not using Dropbox anymore, it is going through Otixo…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAIpm2qmglU


Dropbox does not provide easy to use URL's to mount as a network disk so I don't think this is possible on OS X.

Dropbox's forum has this too…

https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/communities/public/questions/202133795-How-to-ma p-dropbox-as-a-network-drive-on-Mac?loca…


You may need to examine the Windows computers carefully - if they have Dropbox installed & running then all the files are stored on the local machine in addition to the 'mapped drive'.


It looks to me like people are 'redirecting' the local copy to appear like a remote disk just so they can address that path on other machines - each PC is being setup the same. You could create aliases on OS X, but it doesn't help move files off the machine.


Hopefully someone else will contradict me, but I don't think this is how Dropbox works.

Apr 18, 2015 3:46 AM in response to aprince03

The service called 'Dropbox', which is what I assume you are talking about (rather than a generic shared file called dropbox) syncs the contents of the folder called 'Dropbox' to its own server.


SugarSync syncs any chosen folder to its server and then to other Macs, but it also has a Web Archive where the files are stored only on the server and not on the Mac. The entire server, both synced folders and the Web Archive, can be mounted as a normal external network disk. It's a much more flexible service than Dropbox. (I have no connection with this firm.)

when using a personal dropbox account, is it possible to use the mapped drive without downloading all my dropbox files to my hard drive as well?

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