Moving dropbox to another PC without downloading it all again

Is this possible?

ie zip the dropbox folder copy it to a new PC extract it and have drop box point to it. Thus avoiding downloading it all again.

This is what I did:

I had a 7zip backup of the Dropbox folder, dropbox.7z which I extracted on a new Windows setup with Dropbox installed (with the same account).

I exited the Dropbox program and then deleted D:\dropbox, and then renamed D:\dropbox7z_extracted to D:\dropbox.

I then started Dropbox and it began indexing. Took ages but now it's done. But I've got conflicted copies of files...

Solution 1:

According to this Dropbox article, you must install Dropbox on the new computer, let Dropbox create the Dropbox folder on the new computer, stop sync, then copy contents to this folder, enable sync and it should re-index the documents without reloading.

I followed these steps and it worked for me.

Solution 2:

What you're doing here should work just fine - I myself have done it in the past and it usually works without hassle!

However, if you're experiencing some issues it could be due to...

• Simultaneous synchronization of files.
• Conflict of files date and time. Local time will also impact the synchronization and conflict matching.

Adding that I'm certain there a fair few other variables that will impact it, but I'm not certain if permissions and such will.