i use thunderbird to manage my 7 email accounts...they're all set up using IMAP, so the most current emails are still on the server, but i remove each month's emails to a folder on the hard drive in order to keep from going over quota

anyway, about to reformat the computer, but i don't want to lose my tbird settings (including header filters, account settings for each address, spam/junk filters, etc.)...now, the computer has 3 partitions - OS/programs, page, and a my documents partition (where the emails are archived to)

does anyone know of a plugin for tbird that will back up all of my settings so that all i need to do is call up the saved config file when i reinstall tbird and the plugin after reformatting?

2/26/2007 1:10:50 PM

I may be getting confused between Mail.app and Thunderbird, but isn't all of that stuff stored directly in a configuration file somewhere in the Thunderbird install folder?

2/26/2007 1:18:56 PM

^ it might be...if i knew which file it was, i'd copy that file over to the partition that isn't being reformatted

2/26/2007 1:28:10 PM

looking for something like MozBackup?

http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/

(btw, a simple google for "backup thunderbird" nets sites pointing to this extension )

2/26/2007 1:56:26 PM

im sure youve heard this before, but have you thought about using a second hard drive to reinstall your OS on? Then you could use your current hard drive to pull data/settings off of as needed. You could even plug in the "old" hard drive and boot up to it in case you needed to use a program to create a backup file or something. Then, if you really want to keep using your old hard drive as the primary because its a raptor or something, you could use some imaging software liek acronis to pull the image off the new drive and put it on the original drive.

thats how i handle reinstalls and it works beatufiully. i don't have to worry that i backed up everything since my entire install is sitting there on a hard drive.

I don't know much about Thunderbird, but sounds like you need to move your profile:
http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile

Doesn't Thunderbird have an auto migration tool?


http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Folder#What_is_in_my_profile
http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Misc/Q_21277826.html
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Migrating_settings_to_a_new_profile

2/26/2007 2:00:01 PM

^good advice about upgrading, exactly how i do it

2/26/2007 2:03:40 PM

I do this :-
edit %AppData%\Thunderbird\profiles.ini as follows

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=F:\tbird

... and then backup the F:\tbird folder.

Although you could just backup the profile folder http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile#locate

2/26/2007 3:38:26 PM