Cancelling downloads causes C: drive to lose disk space even download location is not specified in C:
I am using windows 7 64 bit. firefox version 32.0.1
Steps to perform: 1. open firefox 2. set download to ask where to save option 3. I choose D:/ 4. download something huge like 500MB or so, the bigger the file download is, the easier you will see the problem. 5. save to D:/ 6. half way through the download, My C:/ drive is losing 250MB of disk space 7. click cancel download 8. My C:/ drive is now filled with extra 250MB of disk space and the temporary folder of firefox is not showing this 250MB file.
Places that I tried to check for these half broken files: 1. C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\ 2. C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Local\Temp
The above 2 folders are less than 50MB in size.
There are 2 problems here: 1. How do I remove these half broken download files from my computer? 2. How do I tell firefox to save the temporary downloaded contents to D instead of the C drive? Currently FireFox is clearly not saving the temporary downloaded file into the path where I have specified.
All Replies (4)
I would have guessed the Temp folder, or possibly the folder last used for a download from the same site (since Firefox generally re-used the last folder used for the same site).
Could you try a global search of C:\Users\username\ for *.part and see whether that turns anything up?
Some sites such as Mega.co.nz use a Firefox IndexedDB database file for intermediate storage of downloads. To check how much space IndexedDB files are consuming, you could:
Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button
Find the folder named storage, right-click it, and use Properties to ascertain its size. If it's huge, that could be the problem. However, I'm not sure how to safely clear obsolete data from here...
Firefox would normally remove a file if you cancel the download. If that isn't happening then your anti-virus software might be locking the file for scanning or other reasons.
Hi cor-el,
I found out that the half broken downloads are being locked by my anti virus program. The half broken downloads are located in the following folder: C:/Windows/Temp
Now my question is why is Firefox saving stuff in C:/Windows/Temp when I specified it in D:/ when I choose that folder specifically?
Firefox immediately starts downloading the file in the background and saves the file to the temp folder and doesn't wait until you specify the name and the location (destination folder).