Is the change in space permanent, i.e, is it possible to upload >4GB images, get 4.5GB extra space, then delete the images and fill the space with other data at a later time, or does the space shrink once the media is deleted?

It's permanent.

Canonical source for this information: http://forums.dropbox.com/forum-build.php

I got this earlier in the week. I initially couldn't get the final 500MB but the trick is to upload a single 500MB+ video by itself.

The free space is great, but the photo upload is a decent feature. It's not as useful to me because I shoot a lot of photos (4.5GB yesterday) and my uplink speed sucks. It's great for quickly getting photos off of my iPhone without messing with iPhoto or iTunes. Having them in Dropbox where I can pull them up on any Dropbox-capable device is a great bonus.

The Android Dropbox app also has a beta going too with the same free space for photo/video uploads offer. (It's the same space as the desktop client offer so you can't get more than an additional 4.5-5GB space total.) That's pretty handy to have your phone automatically sync photos and videos. I know Google+ did it first but I like the Dropbox way too. http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=53013

There was apparently a bug, and the latest version (which I tried two days ago) worked fine. I plugged in my iPhone and uploaded 2.2 GB of pictures, and then plugged in my 7D and earned the rest.

Would this work for people who already maxed out their dropbox free account to the 19 gig limit (w/ .edu)?

Yes it would. I did this and I now have 25 GB of free Dropbox storage. That's about all I will ever need for what I use it for.

EDIT: and it's 5 GB total btw, not 4.5. 500 MB for just opting in.

I had nearly 5GB of photos and videos on my iPhone, so all that was really needed was to install the beta and let it sync. Your Dropbox gets upgraded whenever space is needed during the sync (which could take a while depending on your upload speed).

Just a note to others, you don't need to do all 5 gig in one go, you can keep returning and adding more pics with each 'import' scan of the device.

> The photo import feature is not available on Mac 10.4 and Linux.

I presume the automatic import from camera/cards/etc but I can still upload my photos?

It won't allow you to just upload - it has to import them, they are testing out a new import feature.

It can be any images and video on an SD card etc, but if has to be in the DCIM folder.

--

I think it's a great idea, will easily get me plugging in my ipod and android phone more often now, and and I can see why they want to be the holder of my data, and to encourage me to use more!

to get the space without finding 4.5GB of images:

find any jpg image (file.jpg)

create a large file (5GB): fsutil file createnew test.rar 5368709120

combine the 2 files: copy /b file.jpg + test.rar bigfile.jpg

format thumbstick

create "DCIM" folder on thumbstick

put bigfile.jpg in thumbstick

remove thumbstick and reinsert

use the autorun dialog to select to upload to dropbox

wait

Or in your favorite UNIX flavor:

export MEM_STICK=/Volumes/Data # Replace this with the path to your memory stick

mkdir $MEM_STICK/DCIM

cd /tmp

dd if=/dev/zero of=big.file block=1024 count=5242880

wget http://imgur.com/Y4Ixn.jpg

cat Y4Ixn.jpg big.file > $MEM_STICK/DCIM/big.file.jpg

True if you want to game the system - if you actually want to help them test out there service just upload 5gig of photos and video - I'm sure most people have that?

For me, I already have all my gigs of photos in DropBox, so I had to come up with a way outside of uploading all those images again. I unlocked the first 2GB or so with legit iphone images, but to get the rest of the space, used this method.

Does Dropbox compress files? I did this and it only updated the image itself in record time, yet it accounts to 5GB of space in the box.

You can use mkfile 5g testfile.jpg on OSX.

I no longer recall all the things I've done over the past some years to beat down Autorun and AutoPlay on this Windows machine. /irony

Although I haven't read through it, yet (or at least, not today/recently), this document seems pertinent (in both the depth and the currency of its information):

How to disable the Autorun functionality in Windows

(Article ID: 967715 - Last Review: June 10, 2011 - Revision: 6.3)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967715

P.S. Although I've looked at a few other googled documents, combining the above cited document with this Wikipedia entry provides a rather useful overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoRun

In my current case, if I wish to take advantage of the Dropbox beta's features, I will need to renable Autorun on my Windows XP machine as on Windows XP AutoPlay triggering is dependent upon Autorun being active. I had to check the registry in order to confirm that Autorun is currently, entirely deactivated. The Group Policy Editor was not showing any entries -- perhaps because the registry override that is present pre-empted any GPE control over same?

Replying to self as I can no longer edit the parent.

I can confirm that the beta/process is working for me on my Windows XP Pro SP3 machine. I had to gather/reacquaint myself with some knowledge to make it work. In particular, I had Autorun disabled, which on XP -- but apparently not Vista and 7 -- also preempts triggering of AutoPlay. AutoPlay is required for the Dropbox functionality involved in this beta and the space allocation increase. So, I had to reenable Autorun before proceeding with the Dropbox beta and the upload that increases space allocation.

Here are the steps I put together from my own knowledge, online references (see my parent), and several comments particularly on the Dropbox thread(s):

--

~ I started with a blank SD card. I created a subdirectory named "DCIM" on it and put four MPEG2 files onto it having .mpg extensions and a total size a bit over 5 GB, where the extra size over 5 GB was still within the free/unused capacity I already had in my Dropbox account. I also put one additional MPEG2/.mpg file in the root of the SD card. I didn't know whether it would be recognized by Dropbox's upload process, but I thought it might help determine whether AutoPlay was renabled.

~ Set system restore point before editing Registry and proceding with the rest. Run (less quotes): "%SystemRoot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe"

~ Change Registry settings. In my case, this involved changing the "NoDriveTypeAutoRun" entry under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\". I changed its value from 0xff to 0x91 . See the MS document linked in my parent post for more detail on this, but note in particular that this particular Registry entry also has a machine level counterpart at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoDriveTypeAutoRun . Note also that other values may have been used to alter Autorun behavior -- again, see the MS documentation.

~ Reboot

~ Test whether AutoPlay is working by inserting the SD card in to the card reader. AutoPlay triggers.

~ Back up existing Dropbox content (7zip to an archive file).

~ Install the Dropbox beta (for me, it is at version 1.3.15).

~ Per some comments in the Dropbox discussion linked elsewhere in this HN thread (ok, for example, here: http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?page=2&id=53808) , copy

C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\Application Data\Dropbox\bin\msvcr71.dll

to

C:\Program Files\Dropbox\msvcr71.dll

to bypass a bug.

~ Reboot

~ Insert the SD card.

~ Select from the AutoPlay prompt the option to have Dropbox find/upload photos (I forget the exact phrasing).

--

Now, I don't want Autorun (nor particularly AutoPlay) active, so after all this finishes, I'll go back in and change that Registry entry back to 0xff.

(Like some other commentors suggested, I would prefer to have an option on the Dropbox menu that I can manually trigger.)

Other observations:

The upload (on this Comcast residential connection) is SLOW. This has been a consistent experience for me when uploading large volumes to Dropbox.

The Dropbox system tray button popup describes Dropbox "indexing" the files. This seemed to slow my (admittedly old) system down significantly while it was taking place.

Dropbox found/imported the four .mpg files located within the "DCIM" subdirectory on the SD card. It did not find or import the fifth .mpg file that was located at the card's root.