SSD is still showing full but I moved my files to Dropbox

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pandaks Author

Level 1

8 points

SSD is still showing full but I moved my files to Dropbox

Product: 2011 MacBook Pro

Memory: 8GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Processor: 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7

SSD: Samsung 250GB

My hard drive space seems to fill up pretty quickly and right now it's just about at capacity - I have less than 2GB left. I moved all my photos, movies and documents to my Dropbox account, as I have a terabyte of space there. But on my hard drive, it's still showing I have 31.53 GB of movies despite the Movies folder on my computer being empty. Apps takes up 20 GB and the mysterious Other is the real issue: 118.45. Dropbox won't even sync anymore because I don't have enough space, but Dropbox is a cloud-based storage system. Why does it need SSD space to sync?

What else do I need to move off of my SSD to make room? And why isn't moving my files to Dropbox making room on my SSD? I also cleared my Downloads folder and my Trash, but that did not clear any room either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

Posted on Apr 28, 2016 10:41 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,308 points

Apr 28, 2016 11:04 AM in response to pandaks

You don't understand how Dropbox works.

Putting files "on Dropbox" does not remove them from your hard drive. It simply copies them to their Servers. If you remove them from the Dropbox folder on your Mac they're deleted from the Dropbox servers.

So, there's no way to "move stuff off your Mac" to Dropbox.

Get an External HD and use that.

BTW, at 2 gigs of disk space you risk significant data corruption unless you deal with this issue immediately.

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Answer 2

pandaks Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 28, 2016 1:40 PM in response to Yer_Man

1. I removed the files from my hard drive after moving them to Dropbox ages go. I did forget to mention this in my original post. So the files I copied to Dropbox have been gone from my SSD, plus I copy anything else that gets on my SSD to Dropbox and then delete it. I'm still running out of space.

2. I am dealing with this issue immediately. Why do you think this post exists?

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,308 points

Apr 28, 2016 3:09 PM in response to pandaks

I removed the files from my hard drive after moving them to Dropbox ages go.

Really? Are they in the Dropbox folder on your Mac? Because if they are then they're still on your HD. If they're not then you've an even bigger problem, because they'll be deleted from DropBox too.

2. I am dealing with this issue immediately. Why do you think this post exists?

Okay, but why is this issue you are having with Dropbox on the iPhoto forum of the Apple site? That's not dealing with the issue. Shouldn't you be working with Dropbox support?

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Answer 4

pandaks Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 28, 2016 3:40 PM in response to Yer_Man

I don't know why it's in iPhoto. I never selected it as the forum I wanted to be in.

I just moved my music to my external, which is something I really did not want to do, but at least there's space now. Thanks for your help.

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