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Can I reduce my backup from 378 Gb as it's eating my hard drive

  • 7 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 36 views
  • Last reply by BJ

BJ
BJ

There are 1,700+ files on my PC in the Thunderbird Backup folder, which takes a chunk of hard drive. Can I delete any, or are they all part of the same, complete backup? I have compacted files but it didn't make any difference. I attach a jpg to indicate their size etc showing just a few of the files in size order.

There are 1,700+ files on my PC in the Thunderbird Backup folder, which takes a chunk of hard drive. Can I delete any, or are they all part of the same, complete backup? I have compacted files but it didn't make any difference. I attach a jpg to indicate their size etc showing just a few of the files in size order.

Chosen solution

If you want automatic, scheduled backups that just adds modified files, use the ImportExportTools NG add-on (see picture). It also has a 'Save all mail files' command.

Manual backups are possible by simply copying the Thunderbird folder:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird

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All Replies (7)

BJ
BJ Question owner

Forgot to add image, doh!

Daveh110
Daveh110

What generates those files? I looked for "backup" in my thunderbird folder and found nothing. Just looking at your image, I would guess the longer string of digits is the date, and the shorter string is the time. My intuition is that each is a full (independent) backup but I'm just guessing since I don't know what created them. How does the size of a recent file compare to the size of your Thunderbird profile?

BJ
BJ Question owner

I agree they are dates and maybe time. My profile is 18.5 Gb, so the size doesn't match, unless it's cumulative for a few recent "backups"? I don't want to remove anything unless I am sure that it won't lose things

Truman
Truman

I think Dave's point is what do you have on your computer generating these files. There is no native backup routine in Thunderbird.

BJ
BJ Question owner

I had thought backup was automatic. I checked my extensions and found this:

Copy Folder, "not compatible with Thunderbird 85.5.0", which may be the culprit and has been automatically disabled.

This is what it says about it and it may be because it's not compatible that it has been corrupting the backup?

"Copy folders recursively to any location.The missing Thunderbird "copy folder" feature! Copy any folder and its contents (i.e. subfolders and messages) to any location while maintaining folder structure. Copy an entire POP/IMAP account to your Local Folders as a backup.

Copy Folder does not overwrite any messages or folders. If the folder being copied already exists in the destination location, Copy Folder merges the folders, only copying messages and subfolders that aren't already in the destination folder."

If you think this is the problem I guess deletion won't change anything as I assume backup will not work anyway

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 25 Contributor

Chosen Solution

If you want automatic, scheduled backups that just adds modified files, use the ImportExportTools NG add-on (see picture). It also has a 'Save all mail files' command.

Manual backups are possible by simply copying the Thunderbird folder:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird

BJ
BJ Question owner

Thanks to all for help. I will delete the old backup folder to recover disk space and use the ImportExportTools NG add on as sfhowes suggests.