Is there a faster way to upload photos to Dropbox?

Megahurtz400 · 18 Aug 2016 at 11:39

Hey all,

Have a fair few gigs of photos accumulated since the dawn of digital cameras, and tried to upload them all to Dropbox a few months ago for safe keeping, but gave up before long as it was taking DAYS to upload them on my standard 36meg fibre (Obviously much slower upload).

Any ideas on how I can get what I need uploaded faster, be it public building or a faster service?

mothermachine · 18 Aug 2016 at 11:49

36 meg fibre should have decent upload rate... what is yours supposed to be? Might be that it's not properly connecting at the right speed. I have 72mb which connects at more like 49mb and the upload is something mega like 1.5MB/s which rips through uploads no worries.

Schlong&Stable · 18 Aug 2016 at 11:49

What is the total size of your album of photo's? If the images are all high res, there's no getting away from sluggish uploads. I just let them upload in the background and don't worry about it.

ci_newman · 18 Aug 2016 at 12:02

36Mbps down, but what about the upload? Some of the cheaper packages only have 2Mbps upload, which is barely any better than ADSL.

Megahurtz400 · 18 Aug 2016 at 13:39

ci_newman said:
36Mbps down, but what about the upload? Some of the cheaper packages only have 2Mbps upload, which is barely any better than ADSL.

Truth be told i'm connecting wirelessly at the moment (Was wired when I tried uploading last), so I cant really get a fair Speed Test done.

And yeah all the photos are high res!

Cern · 18 Aug 2016 at 13:48

Fibre broadband usually doesn't have very fast upload. I get 37 Meg down and 2 Meg up, which is pretty much standard for fibre. It can be frustrating for maintaining websites and photo galleries online.

Some broadband companies can adjust the way your service is tuned to provide slightly faster upload, at the expense of maximum download speed. You might be able to squeeze an extra meg or two out this way. Worth asking if you regularly need to do uploads.

if you have cable broadband in your area this might be worth considering as sometimes has faster uploads. Not by much though, perhaps 4 or 5 meg if you're lucky.

Other than that, there's not a lot of options. Public wi-fi hotspots aren't likely to have fast uploads, they'll be tuned for download speed as this is what most people want.

Schlong&Stable · 18 Aug 2016 at 13:52

I've 100mb down and 20mb up (I think), but there's no guarantee that you can upload anywhere close to 20mb anyway as dropbox will have limits.

neil_g · 18 Aug 2016 at 13:54

Thompson_NCL said:
there's no guarantee that you can upload anywhere close to 20mb anyway as dropbox will have limits.

indeed. theres very few cloud providers that do no throttle their incoming data speeds.

andicole0 · 18 Aug 2016 at 13:59

Thompson_NCL said:
I've 100mb down and 20mb up (I think), but there's no guarantee that you can upload anywhere close to 20mb anyway as dropbox will have limits.

2Mbps up is quite slow isn't it I get 20 like Thompson_ncl on bt infinity 2.
OP any idea how far your fibre cabinet is?
Andi.

labcoattech · 18 Aug 2016 at 13:59

I know some providers allow you to send a hard drive with your files on it so they can upload them locally.

Megahurtz400 · 18 Aug 2016 at 14:14

andicole0 said:
2Mbps up is quite slow isn't it I get 20 like Thompson_ncl on bt infinity 2.
OP any idea how far your fibre cabinet is?
Andi.

Probably around 1-2km if the cable goes the route I think it does, live in a very old village though so wouldn't surprise me if the cables shot to bits

As expected, will just have to do them in smaller batches I imagine and wait!

Deleted member 651465 · 18 Aug 2016 at 14:15

There is an option to unrestrict Dropbox bandwidth by clicking in to the settings of the toolbar app. Done this?

Cern · 18 Aug 2016 at 14:21

Megahurtz400 said:
Probably around 1-2km if the cable goes the route I think it does, live in a very old village though so wouldn't surprise me if the cables shot to bits

As expected, will just have to do them in smaller batches I imagine and wait!

If you're living in an old village it's likely your options are rather limited. Chances are that a service with higher upload speeds such as BT Infinity (or the equivalent offered by competitors) isn't available to you. But worth finding out for sure. Also, is there a cable provider serving your village? You might get better results via cable, although some providers such as Virgin impose traffic management on uploads.

neil_g · 18 Aug 2016 at 14:51

EVH said:
There is an option to unrestrict Dropbox bandwidth by clicking in to the settings of the toolbar app. Done this?

reading the dropbox forums it sounds like even with that option enabled it still pretty painful.

ci_newman · 18 Aug 2016 at 15:03

Cern said:
Fibre broadband usually doesn't have very fast upload. I get 37 Meg down and 2 Meg up, which is pretty much standard for fibre. It can be frustrating for maintaining websites and photo galleries online.

Some broadband companies can adjust the way your service is tuned to provide slightly faster upload, at the expense of maximum download speed. You might be able to squeeze an extra meg or two out this way. Worth asking if you regularly need to do uploads.

if you have cable broadband in your area this might be worth considering as sometimes has faster uploads. Not by much though, perhaps 4 or 5 meg if you're lucky.

Other than that, there's not a lot of options. Public wi-fi hotspots aren't likely to have fast uploads, they'll be tuned for download speed as this is what most people want.

2Mbps on fibre is only usually the cheap packages.

I get 55/20 on my fibre.

Cern · 18 Aug 2016 at 15:23

ci_newman said:
2Mbps on fibre is only usually the cheap packages.

I get 55/20 on my fibre.

Not necessarily. Depends on your area and how well cabled / up to date the infrastructure is.

I live in suburban London but the fibre AND cable infrastructure here is truly terrible. Worse than many rural areas as it happens. I'm luckier than most getting 37/2, many around here can barely get half that.

So there's little point in paying a premium if your provider can't physically deliver the speeds.

andicole0 · 18 Aug 2016 at 19:26

Megahurtz400 said:
Probably around 1-2km if the cable goes the route I think it does, live in a very old village though so wouldn't surprise me if the cables shot to bits

As expected, will just have to do them in smaller batches I imagine and wait!

I would just raise a query with your ISP and get them to test the line.
Also you can just leave Dropbox, running, it will sync what and when it can from your local folder.
Andi.

asim18 · 18 Aug 2016 at 21:12

Is it only me who cannot understand the fascination behind wanting to upload your entire photo collection to a bunch of strangers?

ci_newman said:
36Mbps down, but what about the upload? Some of the cheaper packages only have 2Mbps upload, which is barely any better than ADSL.

That's because it is still DSL.

Even 80Mb package they call "fibre" is actually DSL lmao. Uses the same old crap POTS system which they have no choice but to milk as much as they physically can. I mean the fact that they've randomly decided to start calling it "fibre" is just proof of how desperately they're trying to milk this ancient system.

Is there a faster way to upload photos to Dropbox?

Deleted member 651465

Deleted member 651465