How to Manually Backup Mozilla FireFox ?

Posted in Computing, Firefox

How to Manually Backup Mozilla FireFox 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.

An advantage of manual backup is that you don’t need to have Firefox or Thunderbird functioning in order to restore your backup; it’s just a case of copying the backup profiles. That’s a good thing because the most common reason you want to restore is that your Firefox or Thunderbird installation is not working!

How to Manually Backup Mozilla FireFox The hardest 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:

C:\Documents and Settings\<Windows login/user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\
C:\Documents and Settings\<Windows login/user name>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\

To back these up just copy the profiles to an external USB drive or CD. 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 back up.

How to Backup Mozilla FireFox