My thunderbird is around 450mb. Is that a normal size? It doesn't have any emails in the local folder. What are the size for other folks?
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with 3 pop accts and certain emails saved as well as lightning add on
326 MB
caveat I so use SpeedyFox to keep the thing tweaked
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Dr. Seuss
as well as speedy fox, see what
https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/windirstat_portable
or
https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/treesize-free-portable
has to say.
My weekly TB hygiene includes
Tools / Options / Advanced / Network & Disk Space / Clear Now
which may or may not be appropriate for someone else, as well as zapping message filter logs and tidying junk and trash folders before compacting.
Wm
Thunderbird caches your IMAP folders locally (on portable device). You can disable it in folder options.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
but i thought imap kept the message on the server? So is the sync just for headers? I checked and my biggest folders are from News, my usenet groups. Well, I'll look at the imap options.
On a related note, what is the size needed to compact a folder? I have about 100-200mb or so on my usb and it keeps saying the the Sent folder isn't compacting because it needs more space.
Don't be an uberPr∅. They are stinky.
imap does keep messages on the server
tools / acc settings / acc / sync & storage
controls how much and what is kept locally for each imap acc
it looks like you don't have enough space on your usb drive to do TB maintenance; you need to get rid of something if you can't compact and I suggest you do it sooner rather than later before you find yourself in a log jam situation
within TB expiring news articles seems the obvious way forward, settings are in the same place as above though there are per group settings too
without knowing the nature of the messages in your folders it is unlikely anyone will be able to guess accurately how much space you need to compact a folder other than saying around the size of the existing folder would be a good place to start
if (say) you have been sending your resume to lots of people then deleting attachments in your Sent folder will help, you have to call it based on your own data
Wm
like making the sync time to just 15 months, but probably will just take it to 4-8 months.
I backed up my files, then deleted the IMAPmail folder. It recreated itself and thunderbird is down to about 900mb, not 3.5GB. Maybe I will go to 4 months, I'm not sure.
I noticed the only other big file folder is from usenet so I will have to play around with that as well. I see in the "Recover disk space" area in sync/stor I can delete messages, but not by group, only by date or total #. I thought that all those messages were just on the remote server as well, not locally. I don't download anything for off-line storage. I think it's the old newsgroups that I'm not actively reading (past 1-3 years) but may need to refer back later.
I'm probably going to just delete those old ones ... but the archivist in me wants to keep the listings of what I read or not.
Thanks for the tips everyone.
Don't be an uberPr∅. They are stinky.
you said "450mb" at the top and now you are talking about "3.5GB" reduced to "900mb". The numbers make a difference.
At very large sizes TB may not work as well as expected, see
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Limits_%28Thunderbird%29#Folders_and_messages
to get an idea.
individual ngs can be controlled by right click / properties / retention policy and sync tabs
--- added ---
In general you seem to be unsure about local vs remote storage.
IMAP: the main store is usually remote and may be very large; many people find they only need a few weeks or months or some project specific data for local storage for when they are unable to connect to the internet or it is too costly, insecure, etc.
Newsgroups:
don't even think of keeping a full feed for any group except for very low volume, text only groups like announce groups, etc. You will always lose the space or time race and that is what google groups (text) and giganews (text + more), etc are for anyway (you don't say what sort of news feed you have or the sort of groups you follow, you'll notice newsfeed providers have retention policies: some expire after a month or so others are effectively indefinite, one rule for text another for binaries and so on, shouldn't you apply rules too?)
Apart from which TB is a *NON* specialist app at handling ng's so doesn't do it really well, it is intended for casual use of primarily text only conversational groups. If you want to do ng's big time DON'T use TB! Find a better app (there isn't one on PA BTW and the reason for that is, I suggest, that serious ng usage and Portability simply don't match up).
Meanwhile ...
Set sensible sync + store (per news server) and retention and sync per ng settings.
Do you need local storage for the group at all? If not turn it off (you may need to tidy previous misconfigs by deleting some files, ask if you get stuck).
If you want to keep threading, delete the message bodies after x days (you can easily keep years worth of news like this if your provider has long retention so you can get the bodies from them if needed, but note TB won't allow you to thread postings from multiple service providers, which any serious news client does).
Mark articles to keep (e.g. use star) if you read them and they might be useful in future, let other stuff go.
Also look into Local Folders for things you don't need to have with you all the time, e.g. keep the files for a busy / large ng on a home or office based PC hdd and take only the essentials with you on your USB drive.
And, please, next time, get your GB and MB in the right order of magnitude. Size *does* matter
Wm
I thought I mentioned my size mistake, but I rewrote what I was writing a couple of times and must have deleted it.
TB bird has been great for me for newsgroups since 03/04 or so when I started using it, only for text, no binaries or videos to combine.
Before that, pine was program, and some others I forget. I'm sticking with thunderbird mainly because of the single program interface. I was first on my university server, then to eternal.september about 3 years ago. My film and tv are pretty regular so I read those daily.
I feel I did have all those settings set so it wouldn't save anything to my thumbdrive. It was only recently, like within a few months that it jumped to nearly 4gb, so I am not sure, maybe one of the tb updates changed a default setting.
My tbird on my thumbdrive never had anything in local folders, it was on my backup version on my external harddive that I used local folders. For me to back-up I just copy the thumbdrive to my external and let it overwrite settings. _That_ backup also had the older usenet groups that I unsubscribed, but kept the dat and msf files there just in case I ever did go back.
Thank you for your suggestions.
Don't be an uberPr∅. They are stinky.
Take a look at
mozCleaner
ThunderPlunger
and similar.
ViewAbout
may be of interest too (look at about:cache for e.g. it eats a lot here and is part of hygiene mentioned above, this just gives you another view)
Your text only comments and n years ng experience clears up my queries in that regard.
Back to TB, I doubt any update changed anything much but I too have found it tends to leave things behind when accounts are changed, hence the two ext mentioned above, you don't have to use them to do actual cleaning so much as for pointing out old dirs / files to investigate. I do it by hand and eye these days.
I can see a possibility where the copying could end up in duplication but you're aware of it now so hopefully all over now.
Wm