Dropbox Will Allow Users 5GB of Free Space For Testing Beta Product

For the 50 million people who use Dropbox, you can never have too much free space for uploading your images, files and videos. However for free accounts, they cap the storage space to 2GB, but for those testing out a new photo import feature to automatically upload photos, they can get an extra 4.5GB to play around with.

To avail of the offer, users are required to download a beta version of their software as well as testing out a feature which uploades photos and videos to the service.

In a forum post on their site created yesterday, Dropbox stated that for every 500MB of photos and videos users automatically uploaded, they receive another 500MB of space. Counting the initial 500MB for the first photo import, users can get up to 5GB of space through this feature.

The service allows users to import photos from cameras, phones and SD cards onto the site as well as uploading or downloading files in a batch. The company strongly recommends users to create a backup of their Dropbox files first before they try out the beta as the feature is being tested out for any bugs that might crop up.

There are a number of other factors highlighted on the post for users willing to test the feature out.  Such details include the feature isn’t available for Mac 10.4 and Linux, importing from your iPhone requires you to unlock your phone and enter your password before importing, otherwise it will claim to find no photos and (worryingly) Galaxy Nexus smartphones take a lot of time to connect on OS X as it pretends that every image on the device is a photograph, so an estimate bar – which measures in minutes – is required.

This isn’t the first time Dropbox has offered more space to users under certain conditions. For example, they allow users who take a tour of the site or tell their friends an extra 250MB for each action while being a student grants you 500MB. Full details about the beta testing can be found on the Dropbox forum.