Question: Windows 7 starts up very quick (it s installed on an SSD with an i7 processor and 16GB of RAM, and all services I don t use are disabled), but then Dropbox starts and begins indexing files which are on a different disk (SATA Plate HDD, 1TB with 200GB partitions, which includes a Dropbox folder with around 40GB of files). This indexing takes up to 10 minutes and the noise is very annoying. There is also that feeling that something is still loading because of this noise. Note that the Dropbox folder contains My Documents and My Pictures folders, but half the time I am not even adding or changing any files. Is there any way to skip this indexing on start-up or to reduce indexing time?
I know that you can disable Dropbox from starting with Windows, but I would like it to start automatically but skip the indexing part (since there were no changes to files since Windows shut down).
I find this behavior of long indexing strange because before upgrading to a new PC I also had Dropbox on the old one (even the same Plate HDD with same files was used) and there was no indexing noise on startup.
Answer: According to the Dropbox Forum you cannot skip the start up indexing as:
?
A full indexing is way longer than the startup indexing. ?Remember, after startup, Dropbox NEEDs to check if any file has changed while Dropbox did > ?not run. There is no possibility to skip that.
From this I gather the only way to prevent such an occurrence is to stop Dropbox booting on start-up, but I am happy to stand corrected on this issue.
UPDATE:
Generally speaking the difference between full and startup indexing is:
If you reinstall, relink or delete everything your account will require a full index since it is starting from scratch. If, however, your system has an intact index of files a startup index will check to see if anything has changed and act accordingly.
Obviously the more you change during each index the longer it will take. So a good point of call would be to look at how much stuff changes in your Dropbox account. So, for example, do you use it to backup files which change on a daily basis.
It might be an idea to turn off automatic startup and run the process once your system is booted up. Allow you to get on with doing whatever you want while it works in the background.