Pointing Dropbox to a folder that was restored back to its setup location, contents the same as online, will syncing be minimal

dropboxsynchronization

I had a Dropbox folder setup for one of my Ubuntu user accounts.

I had to move the folder elsewhere, temporarily as I had to delete the user account and then recreate it, due to an entirely separate problem, not Dropbox related.

I then moved the Dropbox folder back to the a location in the recreated user account folder, to path /home/user/Dropbox

Then I ran the Dropbox setup and pointed it to this folder.

2 Questions about syncing a restored folder:

  • Given that the contents of /home/user/Dropbox are the same as online, will syncing be minimal?

  • The folder contains shared folders not originally setup by me so would my local copy overwrite these?

Best Answer

It seems to have done a minimal amount of syncing - i.e., it recognised that the files in the local folder were the same as those in the cloud, on Dropbox's servers. It only reported 10 files synced - rest all present. I think those 10 files were ones that had changed before I moved the folder back to be the local Dropbox folder - files that I had changed on my other machine and those by others.