Firefox and Thunderbird Firefox users need to
regularly back up to guard against the possibility that their profile gets
corrupted or wiped after installing a new extension or a new version of Firefox.
If you use Thunderbird then it's even more important that you backup to ensure
you don't accidentally lose your email correspondence and account settings.
There are two ways to backup: use a backup utility or do it yourself manually.
Backup Utilities
MozBackup is a free utility written by Pavel Cvrcek that will automatically
backup Firefox and Thunderbird as well as Netscape and the full Mozilla suite.
It works like a charm - the whole process is driven by a Wizard so easy to use
that even raw beginners will be able to set up automatic backups. It also offers
encryption of the backup files and a complete push-button restore option.
There are also a couple of commercial utilities that will backup Firefox and
Thunderbird. I've not used them but you can find details at http://www.rinjanisoft.com/
Manual Backup
Backing up Firefox and Thunderbird manually is as simple as copying their
respective profile folders to another location. If you do that, you’ll have a
full backup with all your setting and personal data saved.
The hard part is finding the profile folders. First up, they are not located
where you would expect to find them. Secondly, they are located in different
places for different versions of Windows. Thirdly, they may be assigned random
file names that make them difficult to recognize.
On Windows 2000/XP machines the locations for your Firefox and Thunderbird
profiles are respectively:
On Windows 9x/Me PCs they can usually be found at:
C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\25ve0lz5.default
To back these up I copy the profiles to an external USB drive. It's as simple as
that. I do it manually but you could also use Windows Scheduler or a backup
manager to do the job automatically. Make sure, though, that Firefox and
Thunderbird are not running before you backup.
