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Question

MacOS: system disk clone deletes Box files/folders upon sync

  • May 22, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 32 views
C
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Hello,

Happy Box user since 2013!

I have an ancient Mac Pro (Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6) and I recently had to upgrade the system drive (Mac HD) as it was low on space. I have done this a few times (the machine is ten years old), and I remember this happening before as well:

I clone the system drive using Superduper, and then replace the old drive with the new one. As soon as I boot up from the new drive and Box starts to sync, I get notifications it is deleting files/folders. I think I understand at some level what is going on, presumably local Box is empty and cloud Box takes that as a cue to delete files so as to be 100% synced again, or something like that.

But obviously, this is not what I want. For now I have paused sync and restored the trashed files/folders via the browser, but of course I need this computer to be synced. How can I do that without it deleting everything? Thanks,

Menno

 

P.S. This has happened in the past as well, but not every time I clone/replace the system drive (I think I'm on my fourth system drive IIRC)

 

 

    2 replies

    C
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    Hi Zeph, 

    Welcome to the Box Community!

    Thanks for sharing the context of your use case here. We want to point that disaster recovery tools and cloning applications to move Box Sync and the Sync folder from one location to another is not supported, and is known to cause issues.

    For users who upgraded their machines, we highly recommend that you follow the outlined workflow in this article for reinstalling Box Sync in order to properly sync content to your machine. https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044195033-Reinstall-Box-Sync-on-a-New-Computer

    Thanks for your participation in the forum!

    Best,

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    Thanks, France! I'll take a look at that and give it a go. however, a little worried my version of MacOS is no longer supported. Is there an older version of Box Sync you can point me to that should still work on Sierra? I'd rather not uninstall/reinstall without knowing if I can even get Box Sync back at all.

    Thanks.

     

     

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