556206 - Clear Thunderbird Disk Cache Upon Exit

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Preferences, enhancement)

Description

[Scott]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100205 SeaMonkey/2.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100227 Thunderbird/3.0.3

It would be nice to have the same option of clearing the disk cache, in the same fashion as Firefox, upon exiting Thunderbird.  Also, other users might find it useful if you had a setting that would allow the cache to expire after X days.  Both would be optional preference settings so that those who wish to keep the cache indefinitely can leave it off, but those who want to set it for X days or emptying upon exit could do so.  Thanks!


Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

What's the motivation for clearing the disk cache on exit?

AFAICT Firefox only really has it for privacy issues, and I can't see that being much of an issue in Thunderbird as without extensions, pretty much all the data that is in it will be stored on the disk anyway (because they are mail messages) or could be worked out (e.g. from RSS feeds)

Comment 2

[zug_treno]

Duplicate of bug 402730?

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Duplicate of bug 402730?

Not really, that's looks to be about the IMAP local store/data cache which is a different cache from the disk cache (the disk cache is more like a browsing cache).

Comment 4

[Kalenz]

I do think the user is referring to the same issue as 402730, though.

Also, a lot of the noise under 318697 can reasonably be put down to bug 402730, so I would suggest action on that bug.

I am refraining from posting any reference to 402730 or this bug under 318697 to avoid attracting unconstructive discussion. :-)

Comment 5

[Kalenz]

That's bug 318697, sorry, I was not aware that Bugzilla does not automatically link when the word "bug" is omitted.

Comment 6

[Scott]

I am referring to the cache path, that on Windows XP (32-bit) is:

C:\Documents and Settings\[USER]\Local Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.Default User\Cache

I opened this after exporting and archiving old e-mails I no longer wanted in order to clear out all my e-mails completely.  Upon opening this directory, I saw a bunch of files named in the same manner as SeaMonkey and Firefire in their cache.

The point is to purge out the old invalid data.  Why keep cache for something that has already been erased?  It's just wasting disk space.

Comment 7

[David E. Ross]

Any option to purge the cache should include the Offline and Startup caches.

Comment 8

[David E. Ross]

I delete all caches before performing a system-wide backup.  This reduces both the time required to run the backup and the size of the backup file.  None of the deleted caches would be required to restore my system.  

Since I have to delete Thunderbird caches manually, however, the savings in time to execute the backup is more than negated.