Summary: Email is an essential part of our daily lives, both personally and professionally. Ensuring that your emails are safely backed up can save you from potential data loss disasters. When using Thunderbird as your email client, knowing how to back up Thunderbird emails to an external hard drive is essential. In this blog, we’ll explore the need for such backups and provide detailed steps on how to achieve this using various methods.
Table Of Contents
Why There Is a Need to Back up Thunderbird Email to External Drive?
Preventing Data Loss: Preventing data loss is one of the main reasons to backup your Thunderbird emails. Losing your emails can be devastating, regardless of the cause—a system crash, virus attack, or inadvertent deletion. You may make sure you have a safe duplicate of your emails on hand in case of crises by periodically backing up your emails to an external hard drive.
Easy Accessibility and Portability: Easily access your emails from many locations by backing them up to an external disk. Keeping your emails on an external disk might be quite handy if you need to access them while traveling or changing computers.
Security Reasons: Keeping backups on an external hard drive improves data security. When it comes to ransomware and other internet attacks, external drives are less susceptible than cloud storage. By keeping your external drive in a secure place, you can reduce the possibility of unwanted access.
Storage Management: Emails, especially with large attachments, can consume significant space on your computer. Backing them up to an external drive helps free up crucial storage space, ensuring your system runs smoothly and efficiently.
How to Back up Thunderbird Emails to External Drive with Three Possible Ways?
#1: Manual Backup via Copying Profile Folder
One straightforward method to back up Thunderbird emails is by manually copying the profile folder.
- Find the Folder for Your Profile: Navigate to Help > Troubleshooting Information after opening Thunderbird. Under the Profile Folder section, select Open Folder.
- Close the Thunderbird: In order to prevent file conflicts, make sure Thunderbird is closed.
- Make a copy of the profile folder: To your external hard drive, copy the complete profile folder.
Benefits and Drawbacks
Advantages: Easy to use; no extra software needed.
Cons: Time-consuming, manual process; easy to overlook changes.
#2: Using Thunderbird Add-ons for Backup
A variety of add-ons are available for Thunderbird that might make backing up easier.
MozBackup and ImportExportTools NG are two well-liked add-ons.
- Open Thunderbird, then add the ImportExportTools NG add-on.
- After installing the add-on, restart Thunderbird.
- Right-click on the folder you wish to backup after selecting it.
- To backup Thunderbird emails to a hard drive in the EML format, select ImportExportTools NG, Export folder, and then EML format.
- Click Select Folder after deciding where you want the files to be saved on the hard disk.
Advantages and Drawbacks
Pros: Regular, easy-to-use, and automated backups are advantages.
Cons: Depending on add-on reliability, there can be a learning curve.
#3: Use Save As Option to Backup Thunderbird Emails to External Hard Drive
- Open Mozilla Thunderbird
- Select the emails that you wish to store on the external device.
- After selecting Save As, click the Menu button (three horizontal lines).
- To save the chosen emails, enter the name of the folder and choose a storage place.
- In order to complete the backup procedure, click the Save button.
Professional Approach to Backup Thunderbird Emails Automatically
If you want an error-free and automatic way to backup Thunderbird Emails to External Hard Drive, you should opt for a professional TrijaTech Thunderbird Backup Tool. It facilitates you to save Thunderbird emails to various other email clients. It has a wide supportability with Windows and Mac OS versions.
Also Read: How to Export AOL Email to PST File Format?
Conclusion
It’s a good idea to backup your Thunderbird emails to an external hard drive in order to protect your information. Every option has advantages, whether you want to utilize professional backup software, employ Thunderbird add-ons, or perform manual backups. Frequent backups improve accessibility and security while preventing data loss. Spend some time backing up your emails so you can sleep well knowing that your information is safe.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ans: The best way depends on your needs. For a simple and free option, manually copying the profile folder works well. For automated and regular backups, using add-ons or professional backup software is recommended.
Ans: Making an email backup at least once a week is advised. But if you often get crucial emails, you might want to think about making daily backups.
Ans: Yes, you can restore emails using the restore function of your preferred backup application or by moving the backed-up profile folder back to its original position on your computer.
Ans: While most third-party software is reliable, there’s always a risk of software bugs or incompatibility issues. Hence, always choose reputable software like Thunderbird Email Backup and keep it updated.
Ans: Make sure your external hard drive is kept in a secure place, if encryption is available, use it, and don’t share it with other people.
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