Comments on: The dreaded “your home directory is full” error

By: Manuela

Manuela — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:05:09 +0000

Hi guys,

My problem started like most of them here. The Mail crashed. When I tried starting it up again, it said the home directory was full and to delete some files. Tried to start Mail few more times, each time the same story…

And then my Mac book, less than 2 years old, started being REALLY slow, I couldn;t turn anything off… plus I started hearing very weird noise coming from within the laptop.

I waited for a while, and then decided to press the power button. However, now the laptop doesn’t start up any more. It goes on, but I just have blank lit screen, and I hear the noise.

The problem is, I’m on holiday, and all my work is in this computer. There is no Mac point on the island either….

Any suggestions? We do have a Mac Book Pro that works… Should I maybe try to start up my Mac Book in a Target mode and try deleting some files? Maybe it came to some sort of error?

I left PCs for good, and was so happy with my Mac.. and then this! WTF… :(

Thanks,
M

By: Jima

Jima — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:44:37 +0000

For me, this works…but only temporarily. I have to continually try to fix this, and it is taking way too much time. This started happening when a license for an antivirus software I had (even for a Mac, just to be safe…) expired & I did not renew. Time to go to the apple stir & have it “professionally” removed, & see if that fixes it. Around the same time, that software started throwing up a ton of messages, & recognition of IPhone got a little funky…I think the timing is a little suspicious here

By: Waterboy

Waterboy — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:54:53 +0000

Fantastic…thanks for this tip…had to do it twice for some reason, but without this I would have still been banging my head against the wall…Cheers

By: Wendy

Wendy — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:21:41 +0000

Finder won’t let me relocate or delete the “envelope index” file at all. It makes the correct sounds, but the file doesn’t actually go anywhere, and i still get the same error when opening apple mail.

(I should’ve stuck with Thunderbird)

By: ted mills

ted mills — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:37:33 +0000

Phew! That was a quick fix. Power went out (and backup didn’t work!) during the writing of an email. Got this message after restart. Googled the phrase. Found this site. Had to do the rebuild twice.

Works!

Thanks!!

By: Baz

Baz — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:46:10 +0000

Hi. I followed this and it allowed me to start Mail again. All looked OK, but when opening any message in the in box it said the message was not downloaded from the server and I had to go online. I am on line. All messages in sent and trash foldeer could be read with no problem.

help! Many thanks, Baz.

By: Laura A

Laura A — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:47:13 +0000

I tried moving envelope index and nothing happened. I tried copying it and this is the message I got:

You cannot copy some of these items to the destination because their names are too long for the destination. Do you want to skip copying these items and continue copying the other items?

Any suggestions? I had a crash the other day and apple helped me fix it. computer is working very slow and I am getting other error messages. I am pretty new to mac and nit sure what I should do. Of course I am out of warranty. I am thinking of getting a new hard drive. After the crash I added an external hard drive for back up and tried to install carbon copy cloner. CCC never actually downloaded after 3 attempt but created txt files. I wonder if this is the problem.

I appreciate any help,

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:58:22 +0000

Still doesn’t work. Happens every time I start up. Do i have to switch to “shudder” Entourage?

By: Josh D

Josh D — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:41:11 +0000

This solution works for me for about 2 minutes. After importing, it reverts back. I’ve done it 10 times. Not sure what to do now, except perhaps to move to a new client.

By: Atalanta

Atalanta — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:52:43 +0000

Grazie mille! It worked! It took an extra step–relaunching Mail after rebuild brought on a message that something was damaged and it would now rebuild but, reassuringly, would save all my data…so then it proceeded to rebuild yet again, and the second time it worked. Yea! Now I can delete my Thunderbird download, which wouldn’t import my Mail messages & folders & prefs anyway…