236218 - error message about disk space but there´s enough free disk space

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Christian Korff]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: 

When I like to fetch my mails I get the error message "There is not enough disk 
space to download new messages. Try deleting old mail, emptying the Trash 
folder, and compacting your mail folders, and then try again."

Well, I just finished configuring Thunderbird.
Then I run Thunderbird as current user everything works fine. But I don´t know 
if this is the reason.
The error message don´t make sense to me.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Thunderbird 0.5 (I run thunderbird under a different user)
2. fetch mails

Comment 1

[Christian Korff]

Well, I forgot to mention that I am using the offical win32-x86 build. Also 
I´ve forgot to mention that I am using the last stable version: Version 0.5

Comment 2

[Don Dowdey]

I am having this problem on two machines running XP.  On both, I have adming 
priviledges and plenty of disk space.  I note the error is mentioned frequently 
in the forums, as recently as yesterday (April 3, 2005)  Here is what I can add.

My version is version 1.0.2 (20050317).
I get the message intermittently -- i.e. i may go for days without it.  When I 
do get the message, it seems unrelated to anything listed in the forums.  For 
example, on one machine I am mostly testing the junk filters.  I have no 
folders and completely delete all mail before downloading.  On this machine, I 
keep messages on the server.  I did a compact folders (even though I had none), 
and it made no difference.  I have no mail files to delete.  

On the other machine, I have many folders and emails.  Compacting makes no 
difference.  On this machine, I do not leave mail on the server.  Deleteing top 
emails makes no difference (either before downloading to Thunderbird or 
afterwards).  I have found that if I keep trying to download mail -- maybe over 
several days, or just a few minutes, some additional email will download (maybe 
4 or 5) before I get the error message.  After a while (maybe days) all the 
mail will finally download without the message.

I am mostly trying to bounce this up.  There are reports of it in the forum for 
a long time.  It has kept me from switching to Thunderbird as my main email 
client, because I can't be assured of getting my mail in a timely fashion.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
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Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.

Comment 5

[joaochope]

I got the same message as above using Thunderbird 24.1.0 on windows 7 64 bits.
Message:"There is not enough disk space to download new messages. Try deleting old mail, emptying the Trash folder, and compacting your mail folders, and then try again"

I got 250GB of free harddisk space. I deleted around two hundred messages from my Inbox and emptied the trash. Furthermore, I compacted the inbox folder and the trash folder.
The problem continues. The problem started today. Until last week there was no such message.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Thunderbird 24.1.0 with a pop3 / smtp account
2. fetch mails.

Comment 6

[[e-mail]]

I got the same message as above using Thunderbird 24.1.1 on windows 7 32 bits.
Message:"There is not enough disk space to download new messages. Try deleting old mail, emptying the Trash folder, and compacting your mail folders, and then try again"

I got 331GB of free harddisk space. The problem started 23-11-2013. Until last week there was no such message.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Thunderbird 24.1.1 with a pop3 / smtp account
2. fetch mails.

Comment 7

[Jose Da Silva]

Same problem for me too, for version 24.2.0, Windows 7, 64bit. Over 200MB of free space.
I think the problem is due to corrupted inbox(es) and/or outbox(es).
The problem happens with one of two inboxes. The 1st inbox is at 280MB, which is okay. The second inbox is at 4GB and this inbox is the one complaining it is full.
You will need to delete a few messages, then right-click the folder, select "properties" and choose repair folder to fix it. You will then see a lot more unread email, however, the problem is due to a 32bit program attempting to access a file, and the limit is 2GB for signed int, or 4GB for unsigned int.
The solutions to fix this is to keep your email boxes smaller than 4GB if you are using 32bit Thunderbird, or else, Thunderbird needs to made to be able to read files larger than 4GB. This will be a problem for VFAT32 or similar file systems that are limited to 4GB max.
The solution for this person was to divide their email into separate archives of 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 so that their inbox remained well below 4GB.
You may also want to be careful if you are backing-up to file systems that cannot handle 4GB or larger (like most USB sticks), because you will then only be ablee to recover a corrupted file because it was truncated at 4GB.

Comment 8

[Jon B]

This is still a problem in Thunderbird 24.5.0.  Reopen this bug and change the error message to something that's actually helpful.  I had to archive my inbox, for instance, before any mail could be retrieved, so it has nothing to do with the hard drive being full, it was the inbox file size being too big.

Comment 9

[Jose Da Silva]

Hi Jon B,
There appears no method allowing you to open an expired bug. Started a new Bug 1017028 with approximately the same title with a slightly more helpful subject line.