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Is it normal that Firefox consumes Hard Disk Space while open?

  • 3 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 149 views
  • Last reply by JustinRez

iGirl
iGirl
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Last week I noticed the following "strange" behavior of Firefox on my iMac (running Snow Leopard 10.6.8): while I have the browser open (usually on Facebook) my hard disk space seems to reduce (e.g from 265,14 GB to 265,01 GB). When I close Firefox and restart my computer, the amount of hard disk space increases again. It don't know if this was happening in the past or if it is something normal. I don't have any themes or extensions installed, my plugins are all up to date and I don't do a lot of browsing (just have the FB Startpage open and chat). Firefox doesn't seem to have any performance issues, but I would just like to know if this is a problem and if I could troubleshoot it somehow.

Last week I noticed the following "strange" behavior of Firefox on my iMac (running Snow Leopard 10.6.8): while I have the browser open (usually on Facebook) my hard disk space seems to reduce (e.g from 265,14 GB to 265,01 GB). When I close Firefox and restart my computer, the amount of hard disk space increases again. It don't know if this was happening in the past or if it is something normal. I don't have any themes or extensions installed, my plugins are all up to date and I don't do a lot of browsing (just have the FB Startpage open and chat). Firefox doesn't seem to have any performance issues, but I would just like to know if this is a problem and if I could troubleshoot it somehow.

Chosen solution

Firefox is using over a GB of space on my hard disk very regularly (sometimes 2GB). This seems excessive - especially since I've set the cache size to 500MB.

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All Replies (3)

iGirl
iGirl Question owner
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Just cleared my cache (history, cookies, everything) and I got my disk space back. I'll check its behavior and provide feedback. Hope it's solved ...

ivanovnegro
ivanovnegro
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That is normal behavior. It is using your cache. You can always clear before closing Firefox or change the value from:

Preferences -> Advanced -> Cache Management

Though I would let it how it is as Firefox is working efficiently by default, you can decrease it but you should not disable it IMO as it can happen when your disk space is tiny Firefox and your machine won't work as expected.

JustinRez
JustinRez
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Chosen Solution

Firefox is using over a GB of space on my hard disk very regularly (sometimes 2GB). This seems excessive - especially since I've set the cache size to 500MB.