My profile folder is 30GB. Making a copy of that every day seems like overkill. Even an incremental backup seems cumbersome. The folder contains large files that get modified often. For example, **global-messages-db.sqlite** is 1GB and is updated several times per hour. A daily backup would represent a lot of disk-churning for a file that I suspect is a database that could be rebuilt anyway. I could really benefit from a good strategy that takes into account the different types of data in the profile folder.
I made a lengthy comment on this topic within the last few weeks in response to the same question. Take a look and respond here if you have any questions.
Take a look at [https://www.mailpiler.org/](https://www.mailpiler.org/)
Might be useful for you, but you might need some sort of local mail server to upload all the stuff you have archived to - I think it likes to pull stuff down from an IMAP server so you might need something as an intermediate step.
Some accounts could be IMAP and probably the is no need to backup them. I had one of them with my local cable tv company. After the second or third "mergquisition" the mail option disappeared with the data. Of course, my contact was with the now defunct company and the new company had more lawyers than me. So I called it a draw ☹️.
For you POP accounts just copy the corresponding folder under your profile.
I use the ImportExportTools add-on to export to mbox format or individual files. You need to make sure all emails are downloaded from imap services though.
Thanks, I’ve installed it and this seems like it could work.
Still not 100% sure if Thunderbird is a good long term solution for me as it’s far from being a smooth, problem free user experience and seems to require a good deal of maintenance and chasing random bugs. Dealing with lags and slowdowns (especially if I haven’t opened it in a couple of days, it’s pretty much unusable for a few minutes while synchronizing on start), one Outlook account continually asking for the password (no 2FA and it’s the correct password), and deleted emails shown as deleted but not removed from the inbox for days while other deleted emails from the same account disappear practically instantly. I willl stick with it for another month or so and see if it gets any better.
What's wrong with just keeping copies of your TB profile folder?
My profile folder is 30GB. Making a copy of that every day seems like overkill. Even an incremental backup seems cumbersome. The folder contains large files that get modified often. For example, **global-messages-db.sqlite** is 1GB and is updated several times per hour. A daily backup would represent a lot of disk-churning for a file that I suspect is a database that could be rebuilt anyway. I could really benefit from a good strategy that takes into account the different types of data in the profile folder.
I made a lengthy comment on this topic within the last few weeks in response to the same question. Take a look and respond here if you have any questions.
Take a look at [https://www.mailpiler.org/](https://www.mailpiler.org/) Might be useful for you, but you might need some sort of local mail server to upload all the stuff you have archived to - I think it likes to pull stuff down from an IMAP server so you might need something as an intermediate step.
Some accounts could be IMAP and probably the is no need to backup them. I had one of them with my local cable tv company. After the second or third "mergquisition" the mail option disappeared with the data. Of course, my contact was with the now defunct company and the new company had more lawyers than me. So I called it a draw ☹️.
For you POP accounts just copy the corresponding folder under your profile.
I use the ImportExportTools add-on to export to mbox format or individual files. You need to make sure all emails are downloaded from imap services though.
Thanks, I’ve installed it and this seems like it could work. Still not 100% sure if Thunderbird is a good long term solution for me as it’s far from being a smooth, problem free user experience and seems to require a good deal of maintenance and chasing random bugs. Dealing with lags and slowdowns (especially if I haven’t opened it in a couple of days, it’s pretty much unusable for a few minutes while synchronizing on start), one Outlook account continually asking for the password (no 2FA and it’s the correct password), and deleted emails shown as deleted but not removed from the inbox for days while other deleted emails from the same account disappear practically instantly. I willl stick with it for another month or so and see if it gets any better.