Dropbox problems

[max_torch]

My sister is having technical problems with regards to her work involving dropbox. She bought a Macbook Pro for her work which has 128GB of ROM memory. So what happened is that she is doing graphic design for a fashion company and this company has a dropbox cloud wherein all the workers are syncing to. The way it's set up right now is that there is a dropbox cloud that the whole company uses for multiple projects, and all workers also have a copy of only a portion of the cloud storage that contains only the files relevant to what part they're working in, in their local computers in a special folder that is synced with their part of the cloud so that when anyone makes a change to the cloud it updates everyone's local copy of the project, but now the cloud just keeps on getting bigger and bigger. Everything was fine at first but now the dropbox root folder stored on her computer has become too big that she can no longer upload and download things through her local dropbox folder, and now she is panicking because she can't work anymore, so she bought an external hard drive so that she could transfer her dropbox root folder to her external hard drive, and then only turn on her dropbox ONLY if the external HDD is mounted so that the dropbox cloud won't suddenly start deleting stuff, but after further reading she found some links online such as:
http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-use-Drop ... hard-drive
https://approductive.wordpress.com/2015 ... rd-drives/

that basically says that it could be dangerous to have your dropbox root folder in an external HDD, but do these claims really hold water? How hard is it to simply not forget to turn on your dropbox if you haven't connected your HDD yet? I believe wesnoth project via github operates on similar principles on some of you guys might know how to help.

I also suggested disabling autosync and then only manually downloading and uploading files from the cloud, just like some wesnoth users do with github, but then she says that it is a problem because if the company adds files to the cloud in bulk she can't see neatly all the new files that were sent or changed neatly (the file change history) and instead would have to go through each folder and see the files that have a recent "date modified" which is pretty much impractical to do. Because with the autosync in her computer she gets a chronological list of all the files that are added and changed that she otherwise would not get if she looked only in the dropbox cloud online because in the cloud she says that there is no list like that and she in fact showed me the interface.

Is there a better solution?
Does she really have to go and buy an iMac with a 1TB storage and spend again?
Does the advice in the second link actually make sense?
Also if she buys a new computer she doesn't know how much RAM or Cpu speed she would need exactly but anyway she works with hi res illustrations and photos, when the computer starts hanging or taking long, how do you know whether it is due to a lack of RAM or a lack of processing speed? So that she can have the right intuition with regards to knowing how much she needs to get, cause she might end up buying the top of the line product and it might turn out that she didn't need to after all...

One day I wish I could get her to do some wesnoth art hehe.. She said she will do wesnoth art if you guys give good advice hehe..

[ancestral]

Dropbox is not meant to be used as cloud storage! If her company is doing this, they need to invest in NAS and/or some other kind of service.

However, in the short term, she should either turn off the Auto Sync, or use Selective Sync. There are really no other options.

[max_torch]

Dropbox is not meant to be used as cloud storage! If her company is doing this, they need to invest in NAS and/or some other kind of service.

However, in the short term, she should either turn off the Auto Sync, or use Selective Sync. There are really no other options.

What is dropbox used for then? perhaps then 'cloud storage' was the wrong word, she is merely using it to share files between her and her boss.
What she claims her problem is with turning off autosync is that she no longer gets to see the updated chronological list of the files her boss has uploaded/modified, and would have to sort through a massive amount of folders and files to see what has been changed.. i guess she probably has to buy an iMac to be fully satisfied..

So if she buys a new computer, do you guys know or where on the internet could i direct her to fully understand exactly just how much ram, rom, and cpu speed she needs for the nature of her work? it is high res illustration ahd graphic design, primarily using all the latest features of the whole adobe package..

[ancestral]

I’m not a heavy Dropbox user, but I don’t think a new computer sounds like the right answer.

She needs to talk to a business consultant. If she doesn’t know where to start, honestly, contact the business team at the nearest Apple Store, they’ll talk to her for free and get her pointed in the right direction. Meanwhile, if it turns out she needs a newer computer, I’m sure they can help in that regard, too.

[Iris]

ROM

I hope you mean hard disk/SSD capacity. ROM means read-only memory.

[max_torch]

ROM

I hope you mean hard disk/SSD capacity. ROM means read-only memory.

Yes that is precisely what is being meant.


She consulted the business team in the apple store, and the advisory was really to buy a new computer.

[pyndragon]

There are a few workflows where 128GB of storage is enough, but art production is not one of them. Hopefully she went for a 512GB SSD so that this doesn't repeat a little bit down the road....