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Disk Space usage discrepancy

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  • Last reply by Wayne Mery

subnero2001
subnero2001
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Hi,

I am running Thunderbird 102.6.1 on Mac OS X Ventura.

The client runs perfectly but for one major issue that I have googles and tried to find an answer for.

I have a single Thunderbird profile which uses just over 360GB of space on my hard drive. When I check on Google Business and check my user, my entire user profile which includes ALL email and Documents is only 76GB.

I can find no reason why Thunderbird is using 360GB of space on the hard drive as it is essentially a mirror of my Google Business email account using imap.

I also have automatic compacting set in Thunderbird and that is what alerted me to the space issue as it now gives the error message that there is not enough space to compact mail folders.

Any help on this is appreciated!

Thank you

Hi, I am running Thunderbird 102.6.1 on Mac OS X Ventura. The client runs perfectly but for one major issue that I have googles and tried to find an answer for. I have a single Thunderbird profile which uses just over 360GB of space on my hard drive. When I check on Google Business and check my user, my entire user profile which includes ALL email and Documents is only 76GB. I can find no reason why Thunderbird is using 360GB of space on the hard drive as it is essentially a mirror of my Google Business email account using imap. I also have automatic compacting set in Thunderbird and that is what alerted me to the space issue as it now gives the error message that there is not enough space to compact mail folders. Any help on this is appreciated! Thank you

All Replies (1)

Wayne Mery
Wayne Mery
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Perhaps you have the same problem as https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1402654 who somehow has multiple copies of the account on disk?

With some care, I think you could just start from scratch with this account: 0. If you have any filters, write them down, and copy the msgfilters.dat file from the account directory to a safe location. 1. In Thunderbird account settings, delete the account and tell it to also delete the data 2. With Thunderbird shut down, recheck the OS for any files that got left under imap.gmail.com and delete them 3. also delete global-messages-db.sqlite 4. Start Thunderbird and add the imap account. 5. Immediately unsubscribe from "All Mail" folder, which for gmail is just an archive directory. You don't need it in Thunderbird. Right+click on the account and pick subscribe, then uncheck All Mail. Restart TB, shut it down, and delete the All Mail folders and files on disk. 6. copy msgfilters.dat back to the account directory 

Also suggest you
  • Try to delete some of your larger messages to reduce space
  • Set Thunderbird to do compact at some higher value, like 500 (MB)