We all love Firefox for its flexibility of doing all sort of browsing tasks using useful firefox add-ons and plug-ins, beautiful interface using themes and persona . But if we have to reinstall our operating system ( windows/linux/mac ) or want to move to a new PC/mac or laptop, moving all our personalized settings, add-ons and themes can be a real hassle and can cost significant time. Thanks to multiple utilities and Firefox extensions this problem is solved and we can create complete and partial backups of Firefox profile, add-ons, extensions and themes and restore it anywhere we like.

Let’s look at few automated tools for performing backups.

FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension)

FEBE is a Firefox extension which allows you to quickly and easily backup all your Firefox extensions. It can back up your extensions, themes, bookmarks, preferences, passwords, cookies and your entire profile. It allows full and selective backup features where you can specify which items you want to backup. Similarly you can selectively restore only the items you need. For instance, you may just want your bookmarks restored and leave everything else as it was.

Quick Features:

• One click backup from the Toolbar.
• Schedule automatic backups on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Can also be configured to backup on Firefox startup and/or shutdown.
• Save backups in time-stamped folders to easily identify when the backups were created. Specify how many folders you wish to keep and FEBE removes the oldest.
• Backup reminder. FEBE can alert you if a backup has not been completed in a specified number of days.
• Comprehensive results report with links to the author’s extension/theme homepages.
• User-defined backups. Make backups of virtually any file or folder – Firefox related or not. Just specify what to backup and FEBE does the rest.
• Extensive built-in help files. Just click the little blue information icons in FEBE options.
• FEBE 6.0 uses native Firefox zip/unzip components. Much, much faster than previous FEBE versions that depended on external, third-party utilities.
• Upload backups to your Box.net account automatically or with a single click.
• Verify your extension directory. Upgrading Firefox versions sometimes leaves garbage in the extensions directory. FEBE can clean it up.
• Quick Backup. You can quickly backup as many or as few individual extensions/themes as you like. They can be saved together in a single, installable xpi file (Similar to CLEO).
• FEBE 6.2 has a new, simpler profile restore interface. No need to use the Firefox Profile Manager to manually create a profile to restore into.
• Once installed, FEBE is available from the Firefox Tools menu. An icon can be placed on the toolbar via (right-click on toolbar) > Customize…

Get FEBE from here

MozBackup

If you are looking for a backup utility for Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Sunbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, Spicebird, Songbird and Netscape then you need MozBackup ( open source). It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc for above mentioned software. This program is a flexible and powerful in term of configuration and type of information it can backup. This program is freeware and works on Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7

You can get MozBackup here:

Let us know if you use any other backup utilities for Firefox.

if you are looking for manual backup steps follow these two links :

http://support.mozilla.com/tr/kb/backup+firefox

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Profiles Details about profiles

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_Tips_:_Backup

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