Dear colleagues,
We recognize that our previous email was the first notice you’d received about new limits to the University of Oregon’s Dropbox storage. We apologize for any inconvenience this abrupt change may have caused.
This email provides additional context and information to help you understand both the sudden change and the resources available to help you with this transition.
During the UO’s recent contract renewal process, Dropbox unexpectedly increased the cost of their unlimited storage offering by 70%, forcing the UO into a more limited contract with only 1 Petabyte of storage. After that took effect on March 12, UO’s Dropbox use increased to nearly 91% of capacity, putting us at risk of exceeding our limit and making Dropbox nonfunctional for all users. Therefore, to avoid operational impacts, Information Services needed to act quickly to keep the university’s storage usage within our contracted maximum.
We’d like to clarify some key points about the new limit, especially in light of the somewhat misleading automated quota notifications from Dropbox:
- Data will not be deleted.
- If you’re receiving this message, it means your account has a temporary exception to the quota that we granted proactively, before enacting the quota. That means even if you’re currently over 100 GB, you can still open, edit, sync, and add files to Dropbox.
- The above should be true even if you’re getting automated notifications from Dropbox that say “your Dropbox account is full.” If your experience differs, please contact UO information technology staff (see below) so we can address the situation.
- If you’d like to stop receiving the automated notifications from Dropbox, please submit a ticket at Dropbox Support. Information Services staff can manually adjust your account settings.
For people seeking higher-capacity storage solutions, Information Services recommends one of the university’s Microsoft services:
UO IT staff can help you switch to one of these services, manage your Dropbox storage, or explore other options. We have staff ready and available to help you.
Information Services remains committed to supporting the UO community as we continue to explore broader storage strategies for the university. We appreciate your flexibility and patience as we navigate this situation.
Sincerely,
Abhijit Pandit
Vice President and Chief Information Officer
