I used to sync my iPhoto library with my iPod, but I gave that up because I needed the space on my iPod for music and videos. Even though I haven’t synced my photos in months, I recently realized I had almost 8GB of valuable hard drive space being eaten up by an unused thumbnail cache.
Apparently these caches are created when you sync you photos to your iPod, but when I turned off that feature, iTunes, or iPhoto, or the OS never deleted the cache.
If you previously used this feature, but now you don’t, you may want to make sure you don’t have gigs of space going to waste. The folder is located in ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/(name of iPod) Cache.
FYI… I’m currently using Tiger and iPhoto ’06. I don’t know if this tip holds up under Leopard, or iPhoto ’08.
I found this wasted space via the excellent freeware tool, WhatSize. It’s a handy little app that can tell you the size of all the files / folders on your drive. It’s great for locating missing drive space.