Proper Setup? EagleFiler library in Dropbox

EagleFiler
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1

Hello all. I’m testing the free trial version of EagleFiler and I’d like some feedback from the community as to whether or not I’ve got it set up properly within Dropbox. I’ve read the manual and spent some time reading the forum and I’m hoping someone with more experience will let me know if I’m on the right track in terms of setup.

For background, I’m running macOS 10.15.4 and I keep all of my files in Dropbox (~ 380 GB).

Here are the steps I followed to use EagleFiler with Dropbox:

  1. Installed EagleFiler
  2. Created a library named Everything in my Dropbox folder (at the root level)
  3. Located the Everything library’s “Files” folder
  4. Moved (manually) all of my existing Dropbox folders into my Everything library’s “Files” folder

This kicked off a massive “scanning for new files” process in EagleFiler, which lasted over 24 hours. I paused Dropbox during this time. Once EagleFiler completed scanning (it eventually did), I allowed Dropbox to start syncing again. At first, Dropbox flipped out and told me it had 2+ days worth of syncing to do. Luckily, it quickly realized that all of those files were actually not new, they had just been moved to a new location (i.e., inside EagleFiler’s library). At this point, everything seems stable and both EagleFiler and Dropbox seem happy.

Based on this info, is this a good approach to using EagleFiler and Dropbox together?

Thanks for any insight you might have.

2

I would say that it’s not typical to put all of one’s files in a single library. But you can certainly do that. It’s mostly a question of whether this makes sense organizationally for you (vs. multiple top-specific libraries) and whether the files and Mac are such that you get the desired performance (380 GB is not a problem if you have large files, but if it’s millions of tiny ones that might be slower than you’d like).

The main thing to be aware of is the rules for library folders, i.e. it’s fine to edit files using other apps, but moving and renaming of files managed by EagleFiler should be done from within EagleFiler.

3

Thank you so much for your response.

Since it wasn’t called out specifically, I feel better that I have EagleFiler and Dropbox set-up in a way that they won’t interfere with each other.

Also, appreciate your point about using a single library versus multiple topic-specific ones. I will experiment with these approaches as I continue the trial of EagleFiler. Thanks!