762337 - Duplicate SDB files created by TB 12.0.1

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 752697

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Barbara]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0
Build ID: 20120420145725

Steps to reproduce:

I noticed an extra folder in my email list with .SDB at the end (notice the capital letters). I had recently gotten a new computer a few weeks ago, and installed Thunderbird 12.01 (formerly had version 3 under XP SP3).  The original file folder was called "x123." (alias)  When I checked the folder on my C: drive, it was called x123.SDB.sdb, and I had one with X123.sdb also.  Within the good one, were file folders that were empty; in the duplicate one, were my email files (no extension).  I had several folders with the SDB duplicates like this that I didn't create myself.


Actual results:

This article explains the behavior I saw: http://www.dusek.eu/duplicate-folders-sdb-sdb-msf-appeared-after-upgrade-to-thunderbird-12/  better than I can.  
  My symptoms: when searching for a particular email never finished or closed, I started to looking more closely at my email filters and folders to find that particular email.  That's when I noticed the duplicate folders.  And, after I fixed the problem, they seemed to be either corrupted or causing the search to never finish. 
  I was finally able to rename the folders in TB, then with TB closed, deleted the bad files from my C: drive under \Users\profile] etc.  And, I had to recopy my original files into my TB profile location.  It took a few attempts to get it done correctly.  I have Windows 7 Pro now. 


Expected results:

The extra SDB folders should not have been there and they should not have caused the problems they did.

Comment 1

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

actually .SDB? 
If actual string is .SBD instead of .SDB, dup of already reported bug 752697?

Comment 2

[Barbara]

Yes, it does appear to be the same bug - though I only  had 3 folders duplicated, not as many as the original poster.  So this can be deleted, or whatever you do with extras.  
  Thanks :) 
Barbara Taylor

Comment 4

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to Barbara from comment #3)
> *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 752697 ***

Do you know who generated upper case xxx.SBD directory instead of lower case xxx.SBD in your environment?

Comment 5

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Sorry for typo. "instead of lower case xxx.sbd in your environment".

Comment 6

[Barbara]

WADA,
 I can only assume that it came from Thunderbird 12.0.1 in the conversion since they were not there in my old hard drive when I used TB 3 (I still have my old hard drive as an external drive now, and a copy of it as a file folder on my new hard drive). 
  When I started up on my new computer with TB 12, I let it import all my old email and settings to the new location under Windows 7 (I had Windows XP before).  
 Since I'm doing weekly mirror backups of my new hard drive, I can't tell when the duplicates were originally created as they have now been deleted.  I do have a few other file folders that are all caps, and they were not duplicated - only 3 of them.  
 I looked in an old mirror copy from July 2011 and can see that for those 3 folders that were duplicated, their extensions were .SBD (all CAPS) not .sbd as the rest of the folders.  I don't know why.  Those would have been used on my old computer in TB 3.  I never noticed any duplicate folders within TB 3 before and they are not duplicated there on my mirror copy as they were in TB12.  
 On my new computer, I was able to delete 2 of the duplicated SBD.sbd folders easily and recopy from my backup.  The 3rd one was very picky and it took me 5 or 6 attempts before it let loose of the duplicate.  I able to get rid if it only by creating a new file folder in TB, then copying over all the emails for that folder, then deleting the original one.  Then, I renamed the new folder back to the original name (I hope that makes sense).  
 Once I finally got rid of the duplicates, they have not returned. 
 I hope that answers your question.  If not, please let me know.  Thanks :)