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Thunderbird suddenly takes up all disk space

  • 2 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 15 views
  • Last reply by christ1

PeterG
PeterG
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I have a longtime Thunderbird setup here. It has been working fine except that lately Thunderbird just freezes up for 5-10 seconds at times, such as after deleting an email.

So I saw a suggestion to allow for compacting folders and I enabled that option.

BAD MOVE!!!!! EXACT OPPOSITE RESULT!!

A couple hours later I got a popup message warning me that I was low on disk space. So, ok, I looked and sure enough my 500 GB drive seemed to be nearly full. So I moved 110 GB of stuff to me second drive.

But then an hour later I got the same message and the disk was full again!

Moved another 70 GB of stuff off, but, you guessed it, same problem.

Now my Thunderbird is 275 GB. It was around 40 before.

The files that seem to be totally insane are in a [gmail].sbd folder.

How do I recover from this? I already shut off the compact option.

I have a longtime Thunderbird setup here. It has been working fine except that lately Thunderbird just freezes up for 5-10 seconds at times, such as after deleting an email. So I saw a suggestion to allow for compacting folders and I enabled that option. BAD MOVE!!!!! EXACT OPPOSITE RESULT!! A couple hours later I got a popup message warning me that I was low on disk space. So, ok, I looked and sure enough my 500 GB drive seemed to be nearly full. So I moved 110 GB of stuff to me second drive. But then an hour later I got the same message and the disk was full again! Moved another 70 GB of stuff off, but, you guessed it, same problem. Now my Thunderbird is 275 GB. It was around 40 before. The files that seem to be totally insane are in a [gmail].sbd folder. How do I recover from this? I already shut off the compact option.

All Replies (2)

PeterG
PeterG Question owner
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Further information:

I found a series of temporary files which I deleted. This freed up 200 GB+ of space.

I have isolated the problem to continued failures to compact. Setting compacting to automatic caused the multiple temporary files. If I ask TB to compact my inbox, which right now has about 150 emails (I always file them after reading) the compacting won't finish but will leave a large temporary file which remains stable. This may be a problem with database indexing or possibly getting interrupted with a "downloading message 5 of 31,000" kind of message which frequently happens where the first number is low and the second high and never progresses.

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
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What is the size of your Inbox file on disk? What is your account type - POP or IMAP? What is your anti-virus software?