Keep Dropbox folder location common in Windows and in Ubuntu

Question

What I'm trying to do is pretty tricky that Dropbox client is not allowing me to do.

I have dual-boot computer with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.10, now, my dropbox account (with 4 GB of space) has 500 MB of data, and I have dropbox client installed in both OS. As dropbox creates sync folder in home directory of any OS by default and I have 4 partitions in my computer so I do not use home folder (for both Windows and Ubuntu) to store my data, and hence space in both the partitions is used mainly for installed programs.

So, having program space occupied by dropbox files doesn't make any sense to me, and since the client is installed in both OS, I have duplicate data (i.e. my full 500 mb dropbox folder) in home directories of Windows as well as Ubuntu. To free some space from Windows partition, I moved dropbox folder to another partition (E:\Dropbox), now on Ubuntu, I tried to do the same by moving the folder location from home directory to /media/Work/Dropbox (the E: drive on Windows), in short, having a single folder to get synced in both OS, such that I don't have to waste 500 MB of additional space occupied my storage and a file upload or download happens only once for any OS. But, as E:\Dropbox already exists, Dropbox client on Ubuntu doesn't allow me to move the sync folder location to the same partition.

How can I attain this? (like tweaking registry settings on Windows or something of that sort on Ubuntu)

Note:

• I have my data partitions auto-mounted in Ubuntu.
• I need to have access to all the files in my dropbox folder and they're updated regularly, so selective sync is not a choice for me.

Answer 1

Try renaming your /media/Work/Dropbox to something else and then change the location in Ubuntu. After you are done doing that, Dropbox will start to download all the files.

Just kill the process at that moment and copy all the contents from your renamed folder and start Dropbox again.