When I use any Adobe products, Box drive attempts to download all files from the cloud

Report · Apr 18, 2025

I'm having a big problem that i inhibiting my work almost completely.

I have used Box drive for my motion design job for around 3 years without issue. Box drive is a storage service like Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. The drive is installed on my machine, so that whenever any software requests access to any of the files on the cloud, Box will automatically download them. From After Effects' or Premeire's perspective, these are simply files located on my local drive - this usually allows for a seamless collaborative workflow for my remote job.

Starting a month ago, I am having a problem where whenever I open Adobe After Effects or Premiere, my computer attempts to download ALL files on Box, hundreds of terabytes worth of files.

This makes my machine very slow, borderline unusable, and also triggers a flurry of error notifications from Box that say "Unable to open folder XYZ. Please try again" for dozens and dozens of folders -- even though I have not touched any of the folders it names.

The problem starts and stops definitively when I open/close Adobe products. I can usually work for about 10 minutes after opening before the issue begins. And then my machine is slow, the notifications start, my Adobe products freeze, and I can't work anymore. In fact, upon testing, the problem still occurs when I create a new project outside of my Box drive folder structure. I can use Adobe products fine however when I turn Box off.

I've tried excluding Box folders from my antimalware, and also I disabled calculate storage from file explorer, but still no luck. I tried to uninstall/reinstall Box drive. Nothing changed.

I don't know what to do. Other Box support articles merely tell me to find what's using the files and disable it, but this is too vague. I need Adobe's help troubleshooting why my machine is requesting access to all these files only when I use Adobe products, and how to disable it. Is AE or Premiere scanning these files? Calculating their size? What?

At the moment, Box is completely unusable to me to the point that I might as well not have it at all. Please help, so that I can do my job again.

I am using a PC - 64 GB RAM, Ryzen 9, 8 TB SSD, as well as the latest release of AE and Premiere.