[SOLVED} Storing Thunderbird E-Mail on an External Hard Drive

[julianvb]

2017-12-09

Is there any way to install or move my Thunderbird e-mail client to an external hard drive? I've been losing my mail so frequently due to computer problems through the years. Any help will be muc happreciated.

Julianvb

[deepakdeshp]

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_m ... underbird)
Hope this helps

[phd21]

Hi "julianvb",

The link provided by "deepakdeshp " does not work for me.

I do not know if you can install Thunderbird (TB) to an external drive, but you can certainly easily change the default folders for your TB profile to another location, like an external drive or USB flash drive stick. Of course, that external drive would have to be connected when using TB from then on (Tip: You could use a "cloud" provider's folder too). Go into TB, click on an email account you have, click "view settings for this account, click "Server Settings", scroll down to "location", and browse to the new location, create a new folder if necessary, one for each email address, restart TB, and the new location will be used from then on. I usually do this to make backing up my TB mail easier by using a profile folder underneath my "Documents" folder since I always backup the "Documents" folder anyway, like "/Documents/tb-email-address-name".


Hope this helps ...

Thunderbird_Custom_Folder1sm.jpg

Thunderbird_Custom_Folder2sm.jpg

[julianvb]

Thanks very much to you and deepakdeshp. When I get a chance, I'll try out deepakdeshp's suggestion also.

Hi, phd21,

It's a good to hear from you again. I just followed your good advice by creating a 'Thunderbird' folder on an external drive and sending myself a test message. But the resulting text appears as detailed html codes. What can I do to preserve Thunderbird regular format?

How can I restore my old TB local server directory, which now is gone and I can't remember ?
Julianvb

[phd21]

Hi "julianvb",

You are welcome, nice to hear from you too.

Can you provide a screenshot of what you are describing?

I forgot to ask, what is the file system on the external drive, Ms Windows (NTFS, exFat, Fat32, etc...) or Linux (ext4, etc...)? While not in Thunderbird (or restart afterwards), If it is Linux (ext4) then you should probably check the folder permissions to make sure you (user) have permission to the folder (right click folder, select properties, permissions tab, check user and group permissions, make sure it is not root, click apply and ok. Even if it is a MS Windows file system, it could not hurt to check the permissions.

Also, there may be settings in Thunderbird (TB) preferences and email server settings for HTML. I know on my system when reading mail it might not display everything if you get a message that shows "to protect your privacy, Thunderbird has blocked remote content", just click preferences button to allow remote content on emails you want and are familiar with.

I hope you and yours are doing well.

[julianvb]

phd21,

Everything turned out fine. It was a false alarm. I was a bit impatient.. I discovered that it's good to rename the '.thunderbird' folder to 'thunderbird'. To play safe, I simply copy the entire original .thunderbird folder to the new folder named Thunderbird on my external hard drive named 250-hd, which will remain constantly connected to the computer. Schematically,

/home/jul/.thunderbird/ copied totally to /media/jul/250-hd/Thunderbird/

I next replaced the old 'Server Settings' local directory's entry as follows with the Browse button.

/media/250-hd/Thunderbird/18rfqpsw.default

Thus the contents remain the same as before but the mail-storage location is now an external drive. Thanks very much again to everyone.

Julianvb

[phd21]

Hi "julianvb",

You are welcome from all of us that replied...