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Why do I have profiles duplicated under both Roaming and Local?
In my %Appdata%\Local\Mozilla\Firefox folder I have a Profiles directory of 5.1GB In my %Appdata%\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox folder I have a Profiles directory of 13.4GB
Can I get rid of one of them? It seems they might be duplicated.
Also, how can I reduce the size of these profile directories? The space is mainly taken up by the cache2 directory under each profile. I tried deleting files from there, but that destroys all the history and saved form fields etc. How can I selectively delete stuff to reduce the footprint?
If it can be done by wiring some code, I am willing to do that.
All Replies (11)
Not duplicates, but different types of data is stored in those two locations.
"Roaming" is the primary folder with your actual Profile. "Local" is a secondary location which contains the Cache, 'fast load', and other files, as you have learned.
There are a few preferences to limit the size of the cache, but I am not familiar with the current prefs and all my references are a few years old. Someone else will need to answer that for you.
@the-edmeister Thanx for answering one of my questions.
Empty Cache Button {web link} Cache clearing made easy. One click.
Firefox can be set up to purge certain things when it closes. Type about:preferences#privacy<enter> in the address bar.
The button next to History, select Use Custom Settings.
Turn off Always use private browsing mode Turn on Remember my browsing and download history At the bottom of the page, turn on Clear History When Firefox Closes. At the far right, press the Settings button. Turn on ONLY Cache and Form And Search History leaving the others off.
The cache2 folder should only be under AppData\Local and not under AppData\Roaming where the main profile resides. The cache2 folder should only be about 1 GB or less. There is also the safebrowsing and the thumbnail cache (about:newtab) in that location.
Is the profile folder under AppData\Roaming actually 13 GB?
What folder(s) are taking up that much space?
Is that the storage folder or one of the other folder like the bookmarkbackups or sessionstore-backups folder?
%appdata%\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles is 340MB %appData%\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles is 3.8GB
So, the duplication issue is not as bad as I thought. However, I do want to reduce the 3.8GB (there are three other profiles about the same size). So yes, the Roaming Profiles are 13+GB.
I don't want to do a blanket removal, because it will lose my history especially the form field autocompletes are really important to me. The biggest folder in there is the cache2 folder (3.6GB) so I tried clearing the cache from Advanced Preferences, but that didn't do anything.
My "web content cache" is using only 350MB of space and my "application cache" is using 1.7MB. So, why is it so big and how do I reduce the size of this profile?
agupte trɔe
Do you mean that you have a cache2 folder in AppData\Roaming?
- %appData%\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles is 3.8GB
What folders do you have in that location?
%appData%\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles is 13.3GB
%appData%\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\AG is 3.77GB
"AG" is one of the profiles that its directory contains: bookmarkbackups cache2 colorzilla crashes datareporting evernoteclips extensions firebug gmp gmp-eme-adobe gmp-gmpopenh264 healthreport jetpack jumpListCache minidumps safebrowsing saved-telemetry-pings searchplugins sessionstore-backups storage thumbnails weave webapps
The cache2 directory (#2 in list above) under this profile is 3.57GB
agupte trɔe
You can remove any cache2 folder in a Firefox profile folder in AppData\Roaming as this folder shouldn't be there, but should only be in AppData\Local.
Did you check what folder(s) take up most of that disk space?
Under cache2 in Roaming, I have two folders - "doomed" and "entries". It is the entries folder that has 163,607 items and occupies 3.57GB.
What are the time stamps of the files in the cache2 entries folder (recent or old)?
You can remove these cache2 folders to see if they stay away.
You aren't relocating the cache?
Sorry for the delay in responding. Had to get a project out.
All the entries are fairly recent, but that may be because I created this profile by copying another profile, so the date & time reflect the date of the copy.
I deleted files from the cache from the original profile and found that I had been logged out of sites where I was logged in previously. So, I don't want to delete the cache, off the bat.