Comments on: CyberNotes: Firefox Profile Backup Solutions

By: nimicitor

nimicitor — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:24:01 +0000

I use a program called BackupFox and I find it works perfectly.

By: ??????–Firefox-????????

??????–Firefox-???????? — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:45:40 +0000

[...] this year we wrote about two different solutions that could be used to backup your Firefox profile, but it’s possible that you aren’t looking to back everything up. One of the areas that is [...]

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:48:59 +0000

Albert wrote:

For a Win98SE system, would I zip the 9nyl8vxu.default folder located at: Windows/Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/9nyl8vxu.default

Yep, that's what you want to backup. That is the default Firefox profile.

By: Albert

Albert — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:38:12 +0000

For a Win98SE system, would I zip the 9nyl8vxu.default folder located at: Windows/Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/9nyl8vxu.default

By: Lappy

Lappy — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:04:46 +0000

This idea in combination with another great user tip ( [cybernetnews.com] ) would make for a very powerful backup tool indeed!

By: K-IntheHouse

K-IntheHouse — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 13:55:58 +0000

I am with tlm1492 that FEBE failed for me on a recent restore but has worked for me a lot of times! Great to know that it is just a zip file! i will have to try that next time. Great tip for regular Firefox users, Ryan!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:24:23 +0000

This article was not geared for all of power users out there. This is really for all of those people who haven't wanted to hassle with backing up Firefox before because they didn't want to find the profile folder and such. As Satur9 pointed out, these solutions remove many of the steps that would ordinarily confuse you.

Tinhed wrote:

Mozbackup is a windows only solution while FEBE is cross platform

Good point! I forgot to mention that fact.

Anonymous wrote:

Why do these “solutions” say “works with specific extensions”. If they backup the whole Firefox user profile folder then all extensions along with their settings should get backed up right? :)

Well, these backup solutions don't backup your entire profile since they let you select which items you want to backup. I'm guessing that the extensions it can't backup correctly are those not located in the extensions folder in your profile. Some of them create other folders in your profile, which these backup solutions may not be aware of.

tlm1492 wrote:

Watch out! Be sure to test your backup system restore to see if it really restores your profile. I used FEBE and it backed it up and compressed it, but never would restore. I still use the program for auto backups, but since the backup file it saves is really a renamed zip file, I manually do the restore by changing the extension to .zip and unzip it in the profile folder.

Interesting, I didn't realize that the file it creates is just a renamed ZIP. Good to know.

By: tlm1492

tlm1492 — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:11:56 +0000

Watch out! Be sure to test your backup system restore to see if it really restores your profile. I used FEBE and it backed it up and compressed it, but never would restore. I still use the program for auto backups, but since the backup file it saves is really a renamed zip file, I manually do the restore by changing the extension to .zip and unzip it in the profile folder.

By: Fred Thopson

Fred Thopson — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:19:21 +0000

Some kind of auto-zipper with DTG appended to the created filename and auto-delete of old versions would be a great way to automate backing up the profile folder. ERUNT has this capability for its backups. I have it run twice a day with 31 days of backup on my systems.

By: Change

Change — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:24:50 +0000

I also just backup the profile folder regularly. Works fine and is more reliable in my opinion (esp. if you keep multiple copies).