How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

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koolx
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How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by koolx »

I go 2 questions about TB:

1) In backing up the profile folder I noticed that its 1.3GB. A month before it was 820M. Is there a way to debloat it?

2) If I delete mail from TB will that also delete mail from the server?
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tanstaafl
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by tanstaafl »

1. Did you empty the trash and compact the folders (not to confused with compressing or zipping them)?

Deleted messages are normally just marked deleted and hidden from view, they aren't actually physically removed until you compact the folder. i.e. they still take up space even though you don't see them, because they're not really gone yet.

Some other possibilities are you enabled a feature such as global search/indexing or offline folders, when it wasn't enabled before. Or you got a bunch of messages with really large attachments.

2. Depends. If its a POP account and you delete (or move) a message in the inbox while "until I delete it" is checked it will delete the original on the POP server. If its a IMAP account and you delete a message in a offline folder when you synch the folders it will delete the corresponding message in the remote folder.

You need to be much more specific if that doesn't answer your question.
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koolx
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by koolx »

tanstaafl wrote:1. Did you empty the trash and compact the folders (not to confused with compressing or zipping them)?

Deleted messages are normally just marked deleted and hidden from view, they aren't actually physically removed until you compact the folder. i.e. they still take up space even though you don't see them, because they're not really gone yet.

Some other possibilities are you enabled a feature such as global search/indexing or offline folders, when it wasn't enabled before. Or you got a bunch of messages with really large attachments.

2. . If its a IMAP account and you delete a message in a offline folder when you synch the folders it will delete the corresponding message in the remote folder.
.
Hi, I didnt compact the folders. Whats the advantages and drawbacks of doing do?

Could you tell me more about indexing?
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DanRaisch
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by DanRaisch »

See this article for details on what compacting is and what it does -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_: ... ng_Folders

See this article for details on the Global Search and Indexer functionality -- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/global-search
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tanstaafl
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by tanstaafl »

If you use a IMAP account see the Misc section in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Deleting_mess ... P_accounts . Setting Thunderbird to automatically expunge deleted messages when there are 20 of them works much better (reduces your risk of a corrupt folder) than automatically compacting when you have wasted 1MB of space if you don't get a lot of messages with large attachments.
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koolx
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by koolx »

tanstaafl wrote:If you use a IMAP account see the Misc section in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Deleting_mess ... P_accounts . Setting Thunderbird to automatically expunge deleted messages when there are 20 of them works much better (reduces your risk of a corrupt folder) than automatically compacting when you have wasted 1MB of space if you don't get a lot of messages with large attachments.
Do you think havng a profile of 1GB size is good or bad?
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tanstaafl
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by tanstaafl »

There is nothing wrong with having a 1GB profile if you have a lot of downloaded mail. Thunderbird doesn't care about the size of the profile, it cares about the size of individual folders and whether there is enough free disk space available. The issue isn't the profile size, its how much of that 1GB is overhead and deleted messages.
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by DanRaisch »

See this article for more information -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Limits_-_Thunderbird
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koolx
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by koolx »

tanstaafl wrote:There is nothing wrong with having a 1GB profile if you have a lot of downloaded mail. Thunderbird doesn't care about the size of the profile, it cares about the size of individual folders and whether there is enough free disk space available. The issue isn't the profile size, its how much of that 1GB is overhead and deleted messages.
Is there an app that can delete any unwanted messages as you said, overhead and deleted ones? Is there a way I can do this manually?
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DanRaisch
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by DanRaisch »

That's what compacting does. See the link I posted above.
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koolx
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by koolx »

DanRaisch wrote:That's what compacting does. See the link I posted above.
Nope. Didn't read anything even remotely relating to compacting. You sure you linked the right link?

---- EDIT ----
Ok I see the link now. I saw the wrong one. Thanks.
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koolx
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by koolx »

I read the link but I got an issue and questions about it. (BTW, "compacting" is enabled by default since I've had TB. Never changed that setting. The default value is 20MB, BTW).

The issue is, I checked my profile size which was 920MB. I went to Advanced -> Network & Disk Space -> Disk Space. There the cache was 125MB. I cleared it manually and now it says I got virtually 0MB, which is good. But then I check the profile size and I'm shocked to see its now 980MB. How the hell is that possible? Why didn't it reduce further??

When you "compact" the inbox, what happens to the mail in there? The article is iffy about this. All it says is that it frees empty space. I don't get it. Does that mean that compacted mail marked for deletion in the trash will get deleted?

If so, what gets deleted in reality? The mail is the local folders or mail in the server?
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DanRaisch
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by DanRaisch »

The cache has nothing to do with the size of message files as the cache is located in files outside of the message files.

Compacting the Inbox folder effects only the Inbox folder. Compacting the Drafts folder effects only the Drafts folder, etc. And the article is pretty clear as to what is involved -- "When you delete messages in an email client such as Thunderbird they aren't physically deleted. Even emptying the Trash does not get rid of them. Instead they are marked for deletion and hidden from view. They are not physically removed until you "compact" the folder." In the compacting process, Thunderbird reads the message file and copies only the messages NOT marked for deletion to a new file with the same name as the original message file. In other words, if the Inbox contains 150 messages and 50 of those messages had been marked by the user for deletion, only 100 messages were being displayed and the new copy of the Inbox written to disk after compacting will contain only those 100 messages, all of which are displayed to the user. That's how the space saving occurs. The compacted file contains less data than the file before compacting.

For POP accounts, compacting impacts only local folders. With an IMAP account the situation is a bit different and is spelled out here -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_: ... lders#IMAP

You can also compact all folders at one time by using menu path File->Compact Folders.
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koolx
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by koolx »

I didn't mention anything about cache. As I said in my last post, TB by default has set 20MB for compacting. In Options > Advanced it says: "Compact all folders when it will save over 20MB."

About your explanation on compacting, just to be sure, if theres 100 mails in the inbox and 25 are marked for deletion, those 25 mails (already sent to trash) will only get deleted when you compact the inbox? So those 25 mails marked for deletion sent to the trash will get deleted once you compact the inbox, is this correct?

Looks like compacting doesn't work. I've marked hundreds of emails for deletion. After I both "deleted" and compacted all the folders by going into File > Compact the profile size actually grew bigger. Today it was 965MB before compacting and deleting. After compacting/deleting its now 1.05GB How in god's name is that possible?
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DanRaisch
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Re: How Do I Shrink TB? It's Gotten a Bit Bigger

Post by DanRaisch »

I didn't mention anything about cache.
Actually, you did.
I went to Advanced -> Network & Disk Space -> Disk Space. There the cache was 125MB. I cleared it manually and now it says I got virtually 0MB, which is good.
How is the account set up in Thunderbird, as POP or IMAP? Find out using menu path Tools->Account Settings->Server Settings->Server Type at the top right of the dialogue.
Do you have the Global Search and Indexer option switched on or off? That Tools->Options->Advanced->General.
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