Backup SD card data to Dropbox on Android

Martin Brinkmann
Jan 6, 2013
Apps, Google Android
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It is always good to have a backup of important data.  If you regularly change the data on your phone's SD card, or switch between cards regularly, you may be interested in DropSpace, an application for Android that syncs the data on the card automatically with the Dropbox file hosting and syncing service. There are a couple of things to consider, like space, as you can only sync data if your Dropbox storage has enough space available to do so. This should work really well for smaller cards and when you are connected to a wireless network as it will improve transfer speeds significantly.

If you happen to use a 16 Gigabyte or so SD card you may want to find local backup options instead due to storage size requirements and bandwidth that is needed to transfer the data to Dropbox.

You can select the folders and files you want to backup to Dropbox which may make this usable even if the SD card has a large size. Instead of syncing 12 Gigabyte of MP3 files you could instead select to only sync documents to Dropbox as music usually is not the highest priority when it comes to making backups.

First thing that you need to do before anything else is authorize the application to communicate with your Dropbox storage. You are then taken to the start page of the app where you should click on Manage sync list to add directories or files on the phone's SD card to the data list that you want backed up on Dropbox.

backup android data dropbox

Once that is done, you may want to check the available settings displayed underneath the sync buttons to modify some parameters related to the file synchronization. The app will run in 1 hour intervals by default to check if there is data to transfer. It will do so only if it is connected to a Wi-Fi network.

You can modify the interval and the Wi-Fi restriction in the options. There are a couple of other settings of interest here. You can block sync notifications from being displayed to you, enable the deletion of remote files if they are no longer stored on the SD, the syncing back of files from the Dropbox server if the files on it are newer than the files on the SD card, and whether you want to run the app as a service.

DropSpace is ideal for Android users who want some of the data on their SD card to be backed up to a remote location for safety purposes. The application should run on all Android 2.0 or higher versions of the operating system. (via Lifehacker)

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Comments

  1. Beach Bouy said on January 7, 2013 at 4:05 am
    Reply

    Personally, I think backing up SD cards via the cell provider’s data signal is very, very bad idea. If everyone did this, it would probably saturate the cell towers and there would be no bandwidth left to browse a website or make a phone call. It needlessly uses up an excessive amount of bandwidth. It is too simple and too fast not to do this with your personal computer at home.

  2. WindowsBoy said on January 6, 2013 at 1:41 pm
    Reply

    Sorry for going off-topic.. Could you write a detailed guide to place ads and content next to next, just like you have done. Thanks.

  3. B said on January 6, 2013 at 12:39 pm
    Reply

    Great tip, I’ll have to check this app out.

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