Large Dropbox Cache?
While poking around and looking for space I happened to notice the following:
I have a “Dropbox cache” folder using 2 GB! What makes this interesting to me is that I am using just under 900 MB on Dropbox.
I’d theorize that this is used to help offline and versioning scenarios(?) but shouldn’t it cleaned up at some point?
Other Dropbox users, could you check to see if you have similarly sized cache directories on your system?
Updated: Per a forum post, it looks like maybe I can just delete what’s in there… So, knowing that…
Other Dropbox users, check your caches!
Side Note: I only noticed this because I was goofing around with DriveSpaceio which I had just read about over at Tightwad Technica. Pretty slick and worth a look.
Possibly Related posts:
- Dropbox Selective Sync Experimental Build
- Dropbox and that Annoying Notifier
- Dropbox for Linux
- Moving Dropbox
- Windows Live Mesh or DropBox?
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10 Responses to “Large Dropbox Cache?”
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Flair and Sparklies
I was reading your post, and thought I’d explain why the cache is so large based on personal experience. I had an issue with Dropbox, where one of the attached clients deleted files that it shouldn’t have (detailed here http://forums.getdropbox.com/topic.php?id=3794&replies=23). The cache is there so that when a file is deleted by another client, there is a “copy in reserve” in case something goes horribly wrong (as it did in my case). When/if it does, the proper state of your drop box can be restored server side.
I was “very” happy that the cache was there, and was more than willing to give up the 2GB + of disk space in order to retrieve my files.
Just thought you’d want to know.
Excellent point, John. Thanks for sharing that!
My dropbox cache was OVER 12 GB. Deleted!
12 GB!! Wow.
And hey, for anyone running DropBox with Linux, your cache is under your ~you/.dropbox/cache
i use dropbox on my mac and had 18.9 gb of cache!!!
i deleted it
25.5 gig.
OUCH!
DELETED!
I’m the current record holder at 32.3 gigs. Deleting now, with fingers crossed.
You’ll be glad to hear that Dropbox is changing to a 30 day retention on changes… hopefully that’ll avoid such huge caches in the future!
70Gigs. Wife’s computer been acting up so have been removing the dropbox, relocating to new computers, new drives on the same computer, etc, etc.
http://img.skitch.com/20091208-j212tk8ni7mdncr5xixamtehrc.jpg
Still… 70 gigs…
Ran into this problem this morning. My cache was reasonably large (~9 GB), but that’s fine with me. The main problem was that, by default, the cache is put on the C:, which in my case was a small partition just designed to hold the OS and any really essential programs. For anyone having this problem, there are two work-arounds (sorry, both only for Windows…you’re on your own in Linux/Mac):
http://wiki.dropbox.com/DropboxAddons/DropboxDataWrapper
http://www.torgorama.com/2009/11/09/you-learn-something-new-every-day/
I used the second (and it was really easy) because it didn’t require changing anything native to Dropbox.