Back up your Firefox settings with MozBackup

Filed under: Security, Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Back up your Firefox settings with MozBackup

by Brad Linder Aug 27th 2007

A few months go, one of our computers had a major crash and we wound up having to reinstall a number of programs, including Firefox. Being the cautious types we are here at Download Squad, we had made sure to backup our bookmarks as an HTML file, so we figured restoring our settings should be a snap.

But there's also all those toolbars, add-ons, cookies, and saved forms that you never think about. All told, it took a few hours to fully restore Firefox the way we liked it.

It turns out we could have saved a lot of time by using MozBackup. This little lifesaving utility creates a complete backup of your Firefox settings. It's not published by Mozilla, so there might be a few quirks. For example, when you go to backup your extensions, a warning pops up telling you that not every extension is supported.

So we wouldn't recommend recklessly deleting your profile after using MozBackup to see how well the restore process works. But in a pinch, it's better than just backing up your bookmarks.

MozBackup 1.4.7 Beta was released last week, and adds support for Firefox 3.0 Alpha versions.

[via MakeUseOf]

Tags: backup, firefox, mozbackup

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

murph said 4:36PM on 8-27-2007

how does this compare to FEBE? better/worse? what can one do that the other can't?

Gardiner Westbound said 6:32PM on 8-27-2007

I've been using Mozbackup for years. It's a very good application. I've never had a problem with it.

David Macdonald said 10:57PM on 8-27-2007

Quite nice but it seems to for Windows only. If I'm not mistaken all your firefox data is located in your profile directory. You can simply copy the whole profile directory to another machine to back it up. Or as I have done copied the profile directory from a Mac machine to a PC machine- making firefox on the PC run with everything installed as on the Mac machine. See http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile for more information.

Mysterius said 10:59PM on 8-27-2007

I tried doing backups of Firefox a month or two ago, and I repeatedly ran into trouble b/c nothing (manual profile transfer, FEBE/CLEO, or MozBackup) could restore my extensions. Is it b/c one unsupported extension cause all extensions to fail?

conedude13 said 8:18PM on 8-28-2007

I use FEBE in conjunction with CLEO and it works great. All you have to do after a complete restore is adjust the position of your toolbars.

Marc Savoy said 1:53PM on 9-03-2007

I don't believe the reader extolling the virtues of FEBE Firefox backup extension ever used it in a real life situation to re-cover lost profile data
and is simply basing FEBE only on the visual machinations, bells and whistles FEBE displays when implementing a back ujp.

FEBE is an extensions backup extension and does a marvelous demonstration of its seemingly vaunted capabilities with an impressive retinue of on-screen visual machinations, bells and whistles that leaves no doubt your data is safe and secure but which I unfortunately found to be quite the opposite.

FEBE does NOT in fact save your Firefox profile data on your desktop and if that's what you use it for please think again.

I had lost all my FF 2.06 default user data when creating a new user profile to check out the Firefox's latest 3.0 version when Mozilla unconscionably also upgraded my default 2.06 browser wiping away
all my extensive profile data in the process

I wasn't overly upset because I had installed FEBE for just such a scenario but was shocked that FEBE does not maintain any profile
data on your desktop.

Visit the FEBE Discussions page at Firefox addons at
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2109 to read more.

minkmink said 8:43PM on 9-09-2007

I totally agree FEBE as a backup for the Firefox profile is LOUSY. My windows crashed twice, First time i made backup for a "generalized profile" setting and when I reinstalled windows..what a shame! I could not restore any of my settings for firefox!! Waste of time cos all the add ins and themes and extensions had to be reinstalled again. Anyway I didn't have a choice then cos did not know of MozBackup so decided to give FEBE another try but this time I selected "individual settings" and the same thing happened again when I had to reinstall windows..I was unable to restore my profile. I'm going to download and try Mozbackup and will write my comment again when I've tried it. I wish myself luck and for those who want tor tryout FEBE---PLEASE FORGET IT iTS UNRELIABLE AND PLAIN NONSENCE!!!!

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