I was having problems trying to migrate my email data when i updated to lion. i eventually gave up trying and just moved my /Library/Mail folder to my desktop and re-added all my email accounts. when i started to delete the Mail folder i realized it was 150 GB.

For the last 3 years I would notice that emails i had sent years ago were reappearing in my sent folder. Its funny that someone would mention using a specialized service to send large files, because that's exactly what i was doing. I was sharing files on my idisk. However the emails were not just limited to my idisk shares, there were also emails without attachments that would keep appearing in my sent box. 

i contacted some of the people from these recurring messages and they confirmed that they had not received any duplicates. so i just shrugged it off. Little did i know this glitch was eating away at my hard drive. I had noticed that no matter what i did, my hard drive was always gradually decreasing. 

i reinstalled more times than i can count, but for the past 6 years i have always synced my mail accounts with my dotmac/mobileme account. I realize now that it would have been better to re-add my mail accounts manually after a fresh install. i don't believe that would have solved everything, but it would have slowed down the rate of which my hard drive was filing up.

I see now why Apple has abandoned their mobileme platform and gave the mail app a major overhaul. Hopefully the issues are resolved now.

For me, the strategy to manage Mail is to not migrate in the data and start over regularly so I can see what syncs down from the cloud and what mail came from older Macs.

How can I keep Mail.app's archive from becoming too big?
Like full blooded Vulcans, the hybrid Spock is driven by the urges brought on by pon farr. Can hybrid Vulcan/Humans reproduce, or are they like horse/donkey hybrids on Earth, physically willing, but biologicaly unable to create offspring?
