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Backing-up your Mozilla profiles

Nick

Nick

  • Updated:

mozbackupIf you’re a user of Mozilla applications such as Firefox or Thunderbird, then it’s a good idea to make sure that you backup your profile every so often.

One of the best things about Mozilla’s products, especially the Firefox browser, is the ability to customise it to your heart’s content until it’s truly your own. Change the skin, add a load of easy to access bookmarks in your toolbar, plus tons of extensions make Firefox a tweaker’s dream. However, if God forbid, the worst happened and your hard-drive dies or your profile file becomes corrupted, all that hard work will be lost and you’ll have to start from scratch.

There are two main ways to backup your Mozilla profiles – manually or with a program called MozBackup. Doing it manually is not particularly difficult – it just involves backing up the files in your profile folder. However, locating these files can sometimes be tricky, especially since some of them may be hidden unless you’ve got “Show hidden files and folders” selected in Explorer. The location varies depending on the operating system you are using. In the case of Firefox, you can find a full description of the profile locations for your computer and exactly how to back them up manually on the Mozilla website.

However, if you’re intimidated by this or you have problems locating the profile file, you can use MozBackup. This program is especially useful if you use several other Mozilla products, such as Thunderbird and SeaMonkey, as it automatically detects all the Mozilla profiles on your PC. MozBackup is really quick and will have your profiles backed up in a couple of clicks. It displays all the available profiles on your PC and backs them up to a location of your choosing. You can also use this program to restore a profile if you’ve suffered a system crash and lost all that precious data.

Of course, whatever you do with your backup files (which are very small), make sure you store them on a separate device to your main hard-drive in case it crashes.

Nick

Nick

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