From MozillaZine Knowledge Base

File backup

Only add-ons and programs that have been suggested several times in the forums are listed.

• FEBE: Firefox extension. Selective, full profile, and scheduled backup. Rebuilds backed up extensions as installable .xpi files. Integrates with Box.net for online backup storage. (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)
• TEBE beta: Thunderbird extension.
• KLS Mail Backup: Thunderbird aware.
• Gspace: Firefox extension to store files in a Gmail account. It makes the Gmail account look like a FTP host.
• Jaback : A file backup utility for Windows or Mac OS X that supports scheduling and email notification of task failures. The main downside is that it's not Mozilla aware, so you have to understand the profile layout if you don't want to back up the whole profile.
• Syncback is the freeware version of a commercial backup and synchronization tool for Windows. It supports logging, zipping a backup copy, and a differences window that identities what needs to be copied/deleted.

Profile-aware backup

• MozBackup is a common way to back up a profile for Mozilla Suite, Firefox, and Thunderbird. The main drawback is it only supports Windows and you can't schedule a backup.
• BackupFox: Back up your profiles of Firefox and Thunderbird. (Windows)
• Email backup: Profile backup utility for Thunderbird (Mac OS X)

Ezbackup Ultimate and Thunderbird Backup are commercial programs to back up a profile to a directory, CD/DVD, or FTP server, and schedule a automated backup.

Automated online backup

Mozy, Carbonite and Idrive are the most well known commercial services for automated online backup of files. Mozy is the most frequently recommended, and has a free version that provides 2GB of online storage. Some others are Egnyte, Steekr, and Yuntaa. Many of these services offer 1GB of free space, with the option to pay for more storage.

None of these services understand Mozilla profiles, its just a bunch of files to them.

In order to use the service you have to install client software that you can configure to periodically, automatically back up any modified files to the online storage they provide. Mozilla applications typically write to several configuration files (for example prefs.js) when exiting to guarantee that the file is in sync with what's in memory, even if nothing has changed. If the backup software just checks whether the time/date stamp has changed, it will unnecessarily back up those files.

If you're using SeaMonkey or Thunderbird you should consider telling it to exclude any *.msf files. Those files can be recreated by SeaMonkey and Thunderbird. You should also consider avoiding very large folders - split them into multiple folders. The backup software is smart enough not to back up a mbox file (the file used to store all of the messages in a specific folder) if it's already backed up, but its not smart enough to only upload the changes to a file. For example, if you move a 10KB new message to a 1GB folder it will back up the entire 1GB file.

Online file storage

Xdrive, Microsoft Skydrive, Yahoo Briefcase and the upcoming Google My Stuff provide free password protected file storage, but no automated backup. How you back up your profile depends upon how they integrate uploading. Xdrive for example integrates into Windows Explorer. but since its storage doesn't emulate a drive you can't use a regular file backup program with it.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is another alternative, though its not free.

One factor to consider when choosing online file storage is whether they're likely to go out of business, and if they do, how much time do you have to move your files. Xdrive has gone out of business once already.

See also

• Archiving your e-mail Some of the archive programs are a more convenient way to backup and restore your e-mail. They're not listed in this article since they don't also backup your settings, address books etc.
• Mail Utilities
• Profile backup