Backup Your Outlook, Firefox, and Thunderbird Data
August 18th, 2008 by Chuck Sharp
Firefox, Thunderbird, and Outlook share a great “feature” in that they all store their user’s data in rather obscure, hidden directories. It’s very easy to forget to back them up, and very very frustrating to realize that after it’s too late. Fortunately, there are tools to help us out.
Firefox and Thunderbird
These Mozilla programs keep their user data spread across many files within their respective hidden user directories. Mozbackup is a tool that leads a user through creating backup files for Mozilla products like Thunderbird and Firefox. Backups are pretty straightforward, and so is restoring the data. When it’s done, you’ll get a single (possibly very large) file in your documents folder tha contains all of the application user data, which can then be backed up however you manage that. You need to run it once for Thunderbird and once for Firefox to get them both backed up. This a program that should be used once or twice a month.
Outlook
Outlook stores data in .PST files, hidden in a user directory (similar to Mozilla software). Users have one or more PST files that fully contain emails, contacts, calendar, etc. Outlook Personal Folders Backup Tool is a free Microsoft add-in that becomes integrated into Outlook and creates copies of these PST files. It works with Outlook 2002 or later. After installation, a new menu item is created under the File menu called Backup. After the dialog box comes up, it’s possible to create an immediate backup, schedule backups, and open backups. These backup PST files get put into a designated directory, usually under your documents folder. Again, these should be backed up and moved off your PC.
Outlook Personal Folders Backup Tool
Entry Filed under: PC Basics, PC Security, Review
2 Comments Add your own
1. John Spellman | August 20th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Thanks for the heads up on backing up email. What are your thoughts on backing up websites?
2. Chuck Sharp | August 20th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Thanks! For normal websites, the most common method is to find a way to create a zip file of the files on the website. Some web hosts have such a backup feature on their control panels. Some control panels have a webhost file explorer than can create zip files and let you download them. Another, very common way, is to use FTP to connect to the website, download (drag and drop) the whole set of directories right to your desktop. Then it’s just a matter of archiving that copy, whether by zipping it or by some other means.
If you have a blog or other database-driven site, you need to back up the database as well. Usually, the webhost has a database backup feature on the control panel. If you use wordpress, you can install a module (Wordpress Database Backup) to manage this as well.
If you can copy off the databases and the files on the website, that’s pretty much as good as it gets.
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