This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Thunderbird taking up vast amounts of C drive (67.8Gb)

  • 4 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by Wayne Mery

aaron60
aaron60
more options

Hi everyone, I am far from a proficient T-bird user so stick with me... My C. drive has a massive amount of space being used by T-bird, over 67Gb. My account is the only one on this machine and it is hosted with Inmotion Hosting. I've confirmed with them that they see me as an IMAP account and my settings are IMAP also locally. I did find under settings in Sync and storage a setting for 'Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer'. The check mark is checked so it will be keeping all messages. Under Advanced (to choose which folders are 'kept' locally, there are options for all of my folders, some are back to 2014. My question is if I uncheck this box so that the files are not kept locally, will it for some reason expunge the files from the servers within Inmotion? My hesitation is due to talking to them about 14 months ago and I was given erroneous info on POP vs IMAP and subsequently some emails being lost on a corrupt PC. I'm a bit gun shy to execute the unchecking and then the delete of the huge local file.

File path is:: C:\Users\Practice Manager\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\kn769u8t.default-release\ImapMail\secure251.inmotionhosting.com

The secure251.inmotionhosting.com is the big pig with 65.4Gb.

Any insights and help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone, I am far from a proficient T-bird user so stick with me... My C. drive has a massive amount of space being used by T-bird, over 67Gb. My account is the only one on this machine and it is hosted with Inmotion Hosting. I've confirmed with them that they see me as an IMAP account and my settings are IMAP also locally. I did find under settings in Sync and storage a setting for 'Keep messages in all folders for this account on this computer'. The check mark is checked so it will be keeping all messages. Under Advanced (to choose which folders are 'kept' locally, there are options for all of my folders, some are back to 2014. My question is if I uncheck this box so that the files are not kept locally, will it for some reason expunge the files from the servers within Inmotion? My hesitation is due to talking to them about 14 months ago and I was given erroneous info on POP vs IMAP and subsequently some emails being lost on a corrupt PC. I'm a bit gun shy to execute the unchecking and then the delete of the huge local file. File path is:: C:\Users\Practice Manager\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\kn769u8t.default-release\ImapMail\secure251.inmotionhosting.com The secure251.inmotionhosting.com is the big pig with 65.4Gb. Any insights and help would be greatly appreciated.

Modified by aaron60

All Replies (4)

Wayne Mery
Wayne Mery
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

How much space does the SERVER report the account is using?

Unchecking the box will stop FUTURE messages from being automatically synced, but will not free up space already consumed on your C drive.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/imap-synchronization

aaron60
aaron60 Question owner
more options

Thanks Wayne, The server has 8.7somethingGb.

Unchecking the box will stop any future being locally stored. It won't solve the full C drive problem.

If I uncheck the box and then remove the account and delete the huge file. Reinstall TBird, add the account, I should be able to access all the information on the server, correct? Sounds very straight forward to me but I want a second opinion.

Thank you so much for the help so far,

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Reinstalling Thunderbird is not necessary. I believe if you just delete the folder, Thunderbird will repopulate it. Since you mentioned deleting the account, this would be my first attempt. But change the settings for keeping downloaded copies first. These are just my comments. I don't mean to interfere with your conversation with Wayne.

Wayne Mery
Wayne Mery
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Yes, deleting the Windows file will be sufficient. (You wouldn't want to delete the Windows folder above it - that would result in also deleting any filters and subfolders)