Mail cannot save information about your mailboxes because there isn't enough space in your home folder

Hi all,

After following re5i5tor’s steps and guides by re-building the fusion drive and re-installing OSX I can say that my iMac has been working fine for 10 days...

so, from my perspective this is the solution to the issue.

efi-123, maybe it is worth, if you are still willing to go through the process, rebuilding your fusion drive... if this method worked for re5i5tor and me, I don’t see a reason yours would not.

Good luck, everyone!

Not sure why you felt you were forced to install a 3 to 4 (not 5) year old OSX but that is presumably the one your 3 to 4 year old Mac was originally installed with ,and you chose that option on Restore.

Not sure why I installed the 4 years and 3 months old El Capitan?

it’s simple: when you break down your crappy “fusion drive” with disk utility while in CMD+R mode, you end up with two empty hard drives.

And when you boot your computer with an empty hard drive it will AUTOMATICALLY install the OS which was originally installed with the computer when it was new. You DO NOT have a choice when you boot in internet recovery mode (the spinning globe of wait).

I hope my answer will give you enough light on the topic.

Actually after breaking down the fusion drive my 2015 iMac started working much faster since it is running the system in the SSD only.

I decided to live with the 120GB ssd as a system drive and just make sure I store any multi-gig files on another partition.

Also since I was able back-up all my files to the 480GB SSD I bought for the purpose, I decided to restore them in the 2TB internal HDD and wire up the external SSD as a second system SSD. It is a “TeamGroup L5” 480GB ssd drive I got for $75 and plugged into a 2.5” usb 3 enclosure. I get 380/460 read/write speeds even with this old USB enclosure which is still awesome.

"...Not sure why I installed the 4 years and 3 months old El Capitan?..."

I was referring to the normal three options. Are you saying fusion drive only works with the third option?

Command (⌘)-R

Reinstall the latest macOS that was installed on your Mac (recommended).

Option-⌘-R

Upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.

Shift-Option-⌘-R

Reinstall the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available.

This goes beyond mail.

I use Capture Pro One for work and it now frequently tells me it has to quit due to issues with disk space etc. Apple should be dragged over the coals for this; its one thing messing up mail which I am sure most people can access elsewhere but messing up ones ability to work is serious and all these workarounds involve a huge expenditure of time and reading the comments there is no guarantee they will work.

Apple is becoming a joke. These days more a Toys-R-Us for adults than a serious company.

What do Capture One say about their product testing in Catalina?

If it is your work then you should maybe revert to your pre-Catalina backup system til Capture One get their act together?

BTW if it "goes beyond mail" then start a new thread if you want help.

I am saying that when you plug in an empty hard drive in your Mac, the only option you got is the Internet Recovery Mode (spinning globe of wait).

And this is what happens when you break down the fusion drive - you have two empty unpartitioned hard drives.

BTW it’s been some weeks now since I broke down my fusion drive and I am very happy with the speed of my iMac.

BUT I also had to do 2 or 3 hard-reboots by the power button, since the OS just froze several times. And I believe this is again strictly software related and not a bug inside my hardware.

This is not C1 Pros fault, of that I am pretty sure, as the issue is basically the same as issues with Mail (which I also have). Apple is the guilty party re: what they have done regarding fusion drives etc. I have an iMac and it has always been a bit of a lemon (but with Catalina Apple have outdone themselves in turning it into a super lemon; it is functioning so badly in so many ways it's ridiculous.

I agree about Apple paying for this inconvenience to it’s professional user base.

They are crying for a class action lawsuit here!

I personally had to reinstall my system in the middle of a project that could cost me a 5 year long business relationship.

And I already paid for an extra SSD so I can back up my system in a timely manner.

You really upgraded your OS in the middle of a project??

I'm just a retiree with a few club spreadsheets and family photos but I monitored Catalina problems on here for 4 weeks, wrote a test plan and took three backups before upgrading. Set myself a 24 hour review before committing.

As previously posted, I followed re5i5tor’s steps (no separation of the fusion as some other posts suggested) and I now have a stable working machine, with none of the errors that were mentioned throughout this feed.

I’m curious, have the Apple techs in the stores been informed about this issue/fix? After bringing my iMac in for the third time they seem to have fixed the problem. I brought the fusion drive issue to their attention based on what I read on this site. While the machine it appears to be working OK but they lost all my saved folders in mail. 4th trip to the apple store tomorrow.

I upgraded to Catalina prior to starting the project, and got my hands tied by this issue in the middle of it. It was not only Mail.app failing to operate, it was the whole iMac being unable to handle any serious workflow. And since I did not have the time to take any additional risks I just split the fusion drive and went full ahead with SSD + HDD as separate devices. Actually the iMac runs faster now!

Also as previously posted (Nov 4, 2019), I followed re5i5tor’s steps and have had a stable working machine ever since.

In my opinion, re5i5tor's post (Nov 29, 2019 and Jan 4, 2020) should be the one marked as "Solved" and not cllivesey's post of Oct 10, 2019.