On 14/12/2019 09.44, The Horny Goat wrote:
On Thu, 12 Dec 2019 22:07:48 +0100, "Carlos E.R."
wrote:

Backing up email in Thunderbird is trivial, no need to "import": the
folders are just text files, basically the same format as Unix/Linux
uses for email (mbox). Thus they can be moved trivially, even across
several different applications. The indexes can be ignored and recreated
empty: then Thunderbird will populate them from scratch.

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong but it's not always obvious in
Thunderbird where it wants to do your backups which has led to my
saving them on my c: drive which is unfortunate as that's my SSD and I
have LARGE archives of e-mail going back before 2010 (I'm on boards of
multiple provincial and national non-profits) and it's NOT obvious
where one sets one's default directories (as in sometimes it changes
from release to release and sometimes I just plain forget then have to
spelunk to remember where they're set).

I see them here (W10):

C:\Users\Carlos\Application Data -- C:\Users\Carlos\AppData\Roaming

C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles \RANDOM.default\Mail\Local
Folders

And there you find the folders, in this form:

Drafts (mail folder)
Drafts.msf (index file)

Saved
Saved.msf

....

If there is a directory, there will be:

Interesting.sbd\ (directory)
Interesting (file)
Interesting.msf


Those are the emails; to backup them, just copy them somewhere.

Those files above are plain text files that can be read with an editor,
even changed if you are careful.


There is another structu

\C\Users\NAME\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles \RANDOM.default\ImapMail\imap.googlemail.com


which containst the *local copy* of the remote mail server, the cache:

[Gmail].msf INBOX msgFilterRules.dat Receipts.msf Work.msf
[Gmail].sbd INBOX.msf Personal.msf Travel.msf

Normally you do not backup these.


Or backup the entire Thunderbird\* structure. Configuration, filters,
all. Should work.



On a day to day basis I like Thunderbird a lot but for sure I need to
keep better records (preferably in a paper notebook about where things
are kept). It's important to me as I lost both my hard drives back in
2010 due to an intermittant spike coming from a dying power supply

:-(

which I didn't understand that the power supply and not the
motherboard was the problem (e.g. we had first replaced the
motherboard so when it fried the second drive it fried a second
motherboard too.

:-((

The whole experience nearly 10 years later has made
one mildly paranoid.....)

Sure.

You need to keep backups on an external hard disk connected via USB.

Recently I lost a hard disk suddenly for no cause (no SMART warning). It
just went dead. 3 TB of things, including backups.

--
Cheers, Carlos.