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How to reduce size of FF on HDD without loseing passwords and login info

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  • Igcine ukuphendulwa ngu reddogoo1

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After updating from 67.0 to 67.0.1 the amount of space FF uses on my HDD went from 1.6 Gb to 1.3 Gb. Chrome takes up 433 Mb. How can I reduce the size of FF without losing al my passwords and login ingo.

After updating from 67.0 to 67.0.1 the amount of space FF uses on my HDD went from 1.6 Gb to 1.3 Gb. Chrome takes up 433 Mb. How can I reduce the size of FF without losing al my passwords and login ingo.

All Replies (12)

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Firefox already uses a ton of compression to try and keep files as small as possible. Firefox uses around 400MB of storage on my system, so I'm not entirely sure why your is using so much.

You can try clearing the Firefox cache, which often uses a lot of space. You can also try running a cleaning utility like CCleaner to see if it can find any additional junk files.

Generally, I don't recommend ever manually deleting files from your Firefox installation or Firefox profile because you could risk losing important data or damaging your Firefox installation.

Hope this helps.

Okulungisiwe ngu Wesley Branton

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Maybe your disk cache is set up with a maximum of 1 GB (max for 32-bit Firefox). You can check these prefs on the about:config page to see if they are user set (bold).

  • browser.cache.disk.capacity
  • browser.cache.disk.smart_size.enabled
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cor-el

Thanks for the info. Both preferences are BOLD but neither suggests a 1 GB max unless 0 in the browser.cache.disk.capacity field suggest unlimited and 32b FF has an inherent limit of 1 GB. Whatever the case what is the suggested value? browser.cache.disk.smart_size.enabled is a Boolean currently set to false so I assume is not enabled and probably where I would want it to be if I can set a definitive limit with browser.cache.disk.capacity. Here is a screen cap of these "prefs". What are your suggestions?

Thanks again, Ken

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What does the about:cache page report about the disk cache?

There is usually a minimum assumed for the disk cache and a zero value won't work.

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I'm afraid I am not well versed on the about:config or the about:cache pages. Here is a screen shot of the about:cache page. I assume the blue links will expand and can do that if you wish.

"There is usually a minimum assumed for the disk cache and a zero value won't work." Perhaps this is my problem? What value should be entered here? Does the Integer Value represent KB or MB?

Thanks

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The screenshot shows a portable Firefox version and that would explain the size of the disk cache being set to zero. I can't imagine that this Firefox version would take up 1 GB.

What is the size of the "C:\Portable Apps" folder?

Do or did you you have other Firefox versions installed?

If you have previously used regular Firefox versions then you may still have Firefox profile folders left,

Firefox uses two locations for the Firefox profile folder, so make sure to look in the correct location. Location used for the main profile that keeps your personal data (Root Directory on about:preferences).

  • C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

Location used for the disk cache and other temporary files (Local Directory on about:preferences).

  • C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
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"What is the size of the "C:\Portable Apps" folder?" As stated in my initial question, the current size is 1.3 GB. A screen shot of properties on that folder is attached.

"Do or did you you have other Firefox versions installed?" Yes, but I don't use them.

"Firefox uses two locations for the Firefox profile folder, so make sure to look in the correct location."..............etc I don't see anything concerning "(Root Directory on about:preferences)" or "(Local Directory on about:preferences)" on the about:preferences page. Perhaps you could give some assistance in navigating the page? A search in the search box returns nothing.

A search of the firefox folder for profile does return two folders for profile one of which is 1.13 GB soooooo........ probably here in lies the problem. screen shot #3. I can start to look through the 26 folders in the first level of sub directories to see which takes up a lot of disk space unless you have a suggestion of where to go first. screenshot 4.

Getting late here. Going to have to shut it down for the night. Thanks for your help.

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OK one more thing. Looked through some sub directories and found 930MB is in profile -> storage -> default. There are 420 sub directories in default that look like every website I have ever visited. Most have no log ins so I should think I could just delete a bunch of them. But how can I prevent this much disk space from being used in the future?

Thanks again, I really do have to shut it down now.

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Is this help session closed?

I made a copy of my portable FF and deleted many of the entries in the profile -> storage -> default subdirectory and got the overall size of the portable firefox down to a manageable 500 Mb. Problem is these files and folders start accumulation whenever I use firefox. What type data is stored here? Are passwords and such in this folder? What can be done to keep this folder from growing to 1Gb again? Thank you.

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What folder of folders in storage take up this space? Is this space used by extensions (moz-extension)? My storage folder is only a few tens of MB

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Thanks for getting back. AQ1. There are 428 subfolders in the profile -> storage -> default subdirectory and many of them have additional folders for a total of 3,060 folders, all of which I imagine take up space or they would not have been created, no? screen shot 1 AQ2. Apparently it is used by extensions (moz-extension) and possibly other stuff as well. See screen shot 2 for a sample of the first layer of subfolders in profile -> storage -> default.

I deleted every subfolder starting with "moz-extension+++" and many that refereed to sites like the yummly.com and westernjournal.com that I have no recollection of ever visiting or that could not contain login info or other data that I might not want to lose like my location for the weather site. This got the size of the profile -> storage -> default directory down to about 500 Mb but it continues to grow as I use the browser with new unidentifiable "moz-extension+++" folders and possibly others (it's quite congested)

Question1. Does this folder (profile -> storage -> default) or its subfolders contain my login info for sites like Yahoo.mail or default location for weather.com or login to Amazon.com or other type stuff I wouldn't want to lose?

Question2. How can I keep this folder from growing leaps and bounds?

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More info. And correction The overall size of my storage folder after the deletions I made is down to a manageable 53Mb not about 500 as stated above. Still would like to know more about data stored there in the previous 2 questions.

The overall size of the entire portable ff is a manageable 506 MB