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I use a POP configuration for my work mail server and after filling up my disk with 75GB of mail data (per the Storage report in About This Mac) I decided to delete non flagged, old emails to free up space. I selected the messages, moved them to Trash (in Mail) and then hit Erase Deleted Items... I let the Mac sit with power plugged in all night since I saw at the bottom left that it was "Moving X of 300,000 Messages"...
This morning the disk had the exact same amount of data on it. I grepped around and used du to find the largest mail dirs, and found them in ~/Library/Mail/V4/... But at this level, the mailboxes and their content are labeled with long hashes for names, with no easy way to find the messages that I want to delete so I can get rid of them. I can't afford to just delete random messages. Is there any way to truly get these now deleted messages off my hard drive?
JacobIRR
Posted 2017-01-20T06:53:28.960
Reputation: 103
Are you sure the Mail Trash is really empty? That "moving X of 300,000" message sounds like it could have still been moving emails into the trash. Next up, try a reboot in case there's a temp folder somewhere else. Is there really still 75GB of data in ~Library/Mail/V4? If not, look in ~/Library/Caches for any mail caches, if the reboot doesn't free up the space. – jimtut – 2017-01-23T17:34:29.293
@jimtut There is definitely still 70G in Library/Mail/V4 . Whats the reboot process like? I've done safe boot, PRAM reset, etc. not sure if these are what you meant – JacobIRR – 2017-01-23T20:41:24.623
Reboot = restart, but it sounds like you did that thru those other actions. Looking at my Mac, doesn't seem like there's all that much Mail info in the Cache folder. Well, if you had 300,000 unneeded emails in your Inbox, I'm afraid to ask how much you have left that you want to keep. Might be worth trying to export the Inbox and import into another acct on the Mac. If you can live with the export/import after trying it on a test acct, you could erase your main acct Mail settings and files, and do the import there. Not something to be undertaken lightly though... – jimtut – 2017-01-24T00:18:37.080