When I migrated from Fedora 8 to Fedora 9, I used the backup function in Evolution. Before backing up my mail accounts (POP3), I deleted all the sent mails and emptied the trash because it was the perfect moment to do so and it would make the backup file a lot smaller. With 5 mails left in Evolution, the backup file was still around 170MB compressed, strange heh?
I had a closer look at my .evolution folder and figured out that there was a huge “cache” directory for each mail account. This folder seems to contain ALL the messages I ever sent/received since the account’s creation.
I can’t see why there should be any cache for POP accounts (seems to be an IMAP feature), and why that cache is still there after emptying the trash…a Google search later, this seems to be a known bug.
I manually deleted the content of the cache folders and everything seems to work fine, no consequence on my inbox content.
So, if you are using Evolution with a POP account and you wonder where your disk space has gone, have a look at this…
Just use Web-mail, for example gmail
Webmails suck for me, I have multiple accounts everywhere and it’s much more convenient and quicker to have an e-mail application.
I had the same problem – tried deleting files and “expunging” the folders – helped a little but not enough. Then I deleted all the files in the cache folders and seems to work great. Decreased the size of my evolution backup file by 90%!!!!