Thunderbird ain't perfect, either

[Walter Bright]

Miles wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> 1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here.
>> C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to
>> back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.
> 
> A long time ago, I remember reading something about this, either on
> bugzilla or on IRC. The rationale is that this is not something that
> should be handled by Mozilla (now Thunderbird), but instead, by your
> operating system. It doesn't make sense if you use 20 different programs
> to backup your data from every one separatelly.

Sure it makes sense. There are two kinds of backups - backup your whole 
system, and backup individual data sets. Backing up my mail fits about 
right on 1 CD, handy for archiving. So I definitely want to do it 
separately. Backing up my whole system requires buying another disk 
drive, as there's no reasonable way to back up 100 gigs on DVDs or CDs.

> Like pointed out, just copy your whole profile directory and you are
> set. No need to worry with registry keys.

That's fine for programmers like you and I. It isn't so fine for people 
who aren't power users - it doesn't help that the profile directory is 
stored many levels deep, inside a *hidden* directory, and a directory 
with a tty noise name. There's a lot to be said for a 1-click backup 
from the menu like Quicken's.