How to make a full firefox backup. Restoring Mozilla Firefox to its previous appearance. What is FEBE and what is it for?

Backup copy Firefox may be needed in many cases. For example, when reinstalling operating system, to transfer bookmarks, passwords and browser settings to another computer, as well as to correct errors and crashes in Firefox.

Backup Firefox by copying browser profile files

If you need to create a one-time backup Firefox browser to restore it on a new computer or after reinstalling the OS, you can simply save the profile files of this browser in a convenient place, for example, on a memory card or disk. By default, these files are located at: c:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data (or AppData)\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\********.default\

To find and copy these files, File Explorer should display hidden files and folders.

After Firefox installations on a new computer or after Windows reinstallation the contents of the new profile folder must be replaced with the contents of this folder. After this, if necessary, you will need to enable some installed extensions.

To back up only the saved passwords, you need to find and save only two files from this folder: key3.db and signons2.txt.

Backup Firefox using the FEBE extension

The previous method is very simple and takes a little time, but often users remember about a backup copy when it’s too late. Therefore, it is better to take care of creating backups automatically and in advance. The FEBE extension is great for this. It can backup both individual elements (for example, bookmarks, passwords, etc.) and the entire profile. You can also schedule these copies to be created daily, weekly, monthly, or when you start or close your browser.

To install the FEBE add-on, go to the extension page. Click the “Proceed to installation” button. And on next page– “Add to Firefox”.

After installation, restart the browser. If necessary, add the FEBE extension icon to the browser toolbar (right-click on the panel > Configure).

After this, you need to configure the extension. To do this, launch the FEBE settings window.

In the tab What to backup select the objects that need to be saved.

It is also possible to produce additional settings extension, connect it to cloud storage and view information about FEBE.

To restore the necessary data in a new browser, just install FEBE and select the necessary objects to restore in the extension menu. Or restore your profile completely.

After installing this extension in your browser, you don't have to worry about losing important bookmarks or saved passwords. You will also save a lot of time after reinstalling Windows or when transferring browser settings to new computer.

Or wondered how to quickly transfer all this to another computer. Today I will tell you exactly how to save everything you need from this wonderful browser.

A browser profile is a file in which all your Internet browser settings are recorded (saved)! passwords, saved pages, sessions, search history, ... in short - everything that you have changed for yourself since initial installation Mozilla Firefox !
Unforeseen situations happen in life all the time and blue screen system collapse can come to you suddenly, unexpectedly, out of the blue: o)! And even with a simple reinstallation of the system, it will be more convenient to restore the browser settings in a minute, rather than re-registering them within an hour!

A small program by Czech author Pavel Cvrcek will help in this matter. MozBackup (Mozilla Backup) is a utility for creating a backup copy of profiles for programs such as:

MozSuite/SeaMonkey,
Mozilla Firefox,
Mozilla Thunderbird,
Netscape, Flock,
Sunbird, Spicebird,
PostBox and Wyzo.

It will help you save mail, bookmarks, address books, passwords, etc. Works under Windows 95 and higher. The program is absolutely free.

You can download this happiness at the office. website MozBackup(or in Russian mozutil.mozilla-russia.org) or by typing its name in any search engine. It is absolutely free, it is easy to find in Russian, but in English everything is extremely simple and clear, and therefore I will provide you with instructions and English version, and to Russian:o)

1. So, we downloaded the program MozBackup. Click on the installation file

2. The installation of the program begins, there is nothing complicated

3. Just click on the buttons "Further"(Next in English versions)

4.Choose the path and

5. folder to save the program MozBackup

6. Create an icon on the desktop for convenience (or don’t create it - as desired: o)

7. And press the button "Install"

8. In just a few minutes the program will be installed on your computer

Amazing! Now close the browser and run MozBackup…

In the English version, the program's welcome window looks something like this:

Next, we need to select, in fact, the program whose settings\extensions\bookmarks and other joys we want to save and put a circle Save or Restore.
As you can see, the program itself determined which version of the browser we are using! Without interfering with her work, we move on without changing anything!

In the English version: put a circle Backup a profile or Restore a profile(the first means to save everything, the second to restore if you have already saved in a similar way). Choose “Backup a profile” and press “Next>”.

Here you need to specify the location to save the backup copy of your profile!
It is advisable to save it on a non-system drive, but where your data is stored! Create special folder, for example on drive D: and specify it here by clicking “Browse”...

English version: select from the list which profile (if there are several) we want to save (by default this is defaut)

and where the file with the saved data will be located (to select the location you need to click on the button Browse):

Pressing again Next we answer the question affirmatively or negatively (and they ask us whether we want to protect the file with settings\extensions\other goodies with a password)

and in the newly appeared window we select what exactly we want to save - save by checking the boxes! I left it as default...

Just in case, translation:

General settings- settings,
Bookmarks- bookmarks,
History- story,
Extensions- extensions\plugins,
Saved Passwords- passwords,
Cookies- this is a cookie,
Saved Form Details - saved form data,
Downloaded file list- list of downloaded files,
Certificates- certificates.
Button Unknown files opens a list of files that are usually auxiliary for plugins, i.e. if you checked the box Extensions, then it is better to select all files in this list.

By ticking everything you need, clicking Next and perhaps by poking Yes to some question like: “ Are you sure, la la la“, You just have to wait for the saving to finish and then click on the Next button.

During saving, the program may freeze (most often this happens if you chose to save plugins, i.e. checked the box extensions), and therefore do not kill her, but simply endure, because having saved everything, she will hang her jaw and cheerfully report to you that the task has been completed.

That's all! We perform the recovery in the same way, only instead of “Backup a profile”, select “Restore a profile”

Now IMPORTANT NUANCE!
You need to restore your profile to the same version of the browser with which you made the backup! Let me explain! Install, for example, Mozilla Firefox 6, restore the profile by placing in the initial window MozBackup Instead of “Save”, dot opposite “Restore” and only then update the browser to the next, seventh version!

Based on materials from optimakomp.ru, sonikelf.ru

That's probably all.
A similar procedure should be done at least sometimes, because no one knows what can happen to the computer or where your bookmarks may be useful.
Moreover, backup Mozilla profile should be done not when you have already noticed problems and glitches in the browser, but obviously when everything is fine ! Clean it off extra bookmarks and additions! Leave only really necessary settings! And make a backup!

The free program Mozbackup (Mozilla Backup) allows you to save and restore your profile Mozilla browser Firefox. Using Mozbackup, you can create and restore profiles for the following programs: Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Netscape, MozSuite/SeaMonkey, Flock, Sunbird, Spicebird, PostBox and Wyzo.

With Mozbackup, you can back up your Firefox browser profile and then restore your Firefox profile from the backup when needed.

What is a browser profile, and why should you back up your browser profile from time to time?

The Mozilla Firefox browser profile stores all your browser settings: passwords, bookmarks, contacts, installed extensions, browsing history, cookies, browser cache, etc.

As you know, nothing lasts forever in our world, and therefore, just in case, you should take precautions to avoid an unpleasant surprise. May happen by various reasons, sudden equipment failures and software. For example, out of order HDD, there has been a serious problem with the operating system, and it needs to be reinstalled urgently and suddenly.

After reinstalling the operating system, or new installation Usually one or more browsers are installed on your computer, unless, of course, you use only one browser - Internet Explorer, which comes pre-installed with the Windows operating system.

The newly installed Mozilla Firefox browser will have default settings and will not contain any add-ons (extensions), it will not contain your passwords, bookmarks and other settings. Therefore, it is necessary to create backup copies of your browser profile from time to time, so that later you can easily return your settings for the Mozilla Firefox browser.

How can you save bookmarks and all other settings of your browser when reinstalling the operating system or reinstalling the browser?

On the pages of my website, I have already repeatedly described various ways to save the Mozilla Firefox browser profile. There is probably no other browser with this big amount in various ways to save backup settings.

Now it's time to talk about another way to save a profile backup: using free program Mozilla Backup. This program has a Russian version, and therefore, you will not have any difficulties using it.

You will learn how to save Firefox settings, as well as how to transfer Firefox settings to a newly installed browser after installing or reinstalling the operating system, or how to transfer a Firefox profile to another computer.

mozbackup download

From the official Russian-language website of the program you can download the program installer or an archive with a portable version of the program.

You will need to install the program or run the portable version of the Mozilla Backup program from the folder.

Now let's move on to the review of the Mozbackup program and learn how to use this program.

How to save Firefox settings in Mozbackup

After installing the Mozbackup program on your computer, you should run it. A program welcome window opens, in which you need to click on the “Next” button.

In the next “Operation Type” window, you must select the action you want to perform - “Save” or “Restore”. The program selects the Mozilla Firefox browser installed on the computer with the build number of the browser version.

To save your browser settings, you need to activate the “Save” radio button, and then click on the “Next” button.

In the Select Profile window, select the profile you want to save. You will then need to select a location to save your profile backup.

To do this, click on the “Browse” button, and then in the Explorer window select a location to save a backup copy of the Mozilla Firefox browser profile. You can create a folder in advance to store backup copies of your browser profile.

It would be better to create such a folder not on system disk, and on another disk. Because in case of a sudden reinstallation of the operating system, the backup saved on the system disk will be lost along with all other data.

After choosing the location to save the “backup copy”, you need to click on the “Next” button.

In the “Question” window, it is better to click on the “No” button. If you protect the “backup file” with a password, then if you forget the password, then you will no longer be able to restore your browser profile.

In the “Select Components” window, click on the “Next” button.

In the next “Work in Progress” window, a backup copy of the Firefox browser is created.

The “Report” window opens, in which the program informs that the “backup file” has been created and shows the contents of the backup copy. After creating a backup copy of your profile, you need to click on the “Exit” button.

You can now open the folder and verify that your Mozilla Firefox browser profile has been backed up. On my computer, on the “D:” drive, I created a “Firefox Backup” folder, into which I saved a backup copy of the browser profile.

The name of the backup file indicates the browser version and the date the backup was created. The file has the extension ".pcv", and can be opened using an archiver program, for example, WinRAR or 7-Zip.

For greater reliability, you can copy this backup file on a flash drive, or on portable hard disk, and also save a copy of the file in some cloud storage: Yandex.Disk, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc.

How to restore Firefox settings in Mozbackup

If you restore your Firefox profile after reinstalling or reinstalling the operating system, you will need to reinstall the Mozilla Firefox browser on your computer. After installation, the browser will not contain your settings and will have default settings.

Attention! Mozbackup will only restore the version of the browser that was backed up. If at the time of restoration there is a newer version of the browser, then you should install exactly the version of the browser with which the profile backup was made.

After restoring the profile, the browser itself will automatically update to the new version.

Where to find old version browser?

Find the required version browser can be found on the official website mozilla-russia.org. From the main page of the site you can download the most new version browser.

In order to download the old one to your computer Mozilla version Firefox, on home page of this site you need to click on the “Products” button, then in the next window under the description latest version browser, you need to click on the “Other versions...” link.

In the next window, in the right column, you need to find the “Version History” item and click on the link “All versions and Russifications of Firefox”. In a new window, select the desired browser version and download it to your computer. You can see this process visually in the video below this article.

After installing the browser on your computer, you will need to install Mozilla program Backup, if the operating system was reinstalled.

To restore your browser profile, run the Mozbackup program. In the Operation Type window, you must select the action - “Restore”, select the application, and click on the “Next” button.

In the “Select Profile” window, select the profile you want to restore. Then you need to select a file to restore your browser profile. To do this, click on the “Browse” button and find the saved “backup file”.

If you did not reinstall the operating system, then the program itself finds the path to the saved backup copy of the browser profile. After that, click on the “Next” button.

The Mozilla Firefox browser profile is being restored. After restoring your profile, you can launch the browser.

After opening the main window of your browser, you will see that the browser is already working with all your settings. All your add-ons (extensions), passwords, bookmarks and all other settings of your browser will be restored.

In this way, you can transfer the Firefox profile to a new computer if you have several of them and want to use the Mozilla Firefox browser with your own settings on another computer.

In the video below this article, I create a backup copy of the Mozilla Firefox browser profile, then delete the browser from my computer, and then restore the browser profile from the backup with all my settings.

Conclusions of the article

Using Mozbackup will allow you to save and restore the Mozilla Firefox browser profile on your computer.

For Firefox backup (backup)– this is the ability to save the current set of bookmarks, settings, downloaded pages, etc., in order to restore them later. Handy Backup uses Firefox for backup standard plugin“Computer”.

Benefits of backing up Firefox with Handy Backup

Scheduling and automation of tasks

As a backup tool, Firefox Handy Backup allows you to fully automate the backup process. You can configure the Firefox backup task to certain time(with the possibility of periodic, from minutes to months, repetition), or for a system event.

Compared to earlier Firefox backup utilities such as Mozbackup, Handy Backup provides a wide range of backup creation and recovery methods, such as Mozilla full, incremental, differential and mixed backups, encryption, etc.

Storage options

Having created a backup for Mozilla Firefox, you can save it either on local or USB disk, and online (on NAS device, on an FTP/SFTP/FTPS server, in cloud storage, for example, creating a backup copy on Yandex Disk, Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive etc.

Additional Firefox backup options

Download

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Version 8 dated March 4, 2019. 104 MB
Backup program Handy Backup. 1200 RUB for a license

Handy Backup Standard Solution contains everything necessary tools and plugins for creating a backup of Mozilla Firefox on local machine or online. Free, fully functional trial - 30 days!

How to Backup Firefox Using Handy Backup

For Firefox, a backup copy of all settings and options is removed from local folder. Handy Backup uses the standard “Computer” plugin, available in all solutions, to obtain a Mozilla Firefox backup.

Launch Handy Backup and create new task using a button or menu.
Select backup task in Step 1 and go to Step 2.
Select plugin" Computer" from the "Local or Network Drives" group in the left pane.

On a note: You can also use the "Network" plugin, or select a machine from the drop-down list on the left top corner windows (only for network solutions) to back up Firefox over the network.

Double click on the plugin name, or click the “>>” button.
In the window that appears, find and tick the Firefox settings folder.

Advice: under Linux look for this folder at ~/.firefox.

Click OK to return to Step 2 and continue creating the task as described in the User Guide. All other steps do not have any special features. Give the task a memorable name – for example, “Mozilla Firefox backup”.

Comparison of Handy Backup with other Firefox Backup programs and utilities

The outdated Mozbackup utility does not have scheduled backup settings; The same problem is typical for various Firefox backup plugins. In addition, there are practically no solutions that offer Firefox backup to network media out of the box, encryption of backup copies, etc.!

Try Handy Backup as your working tool for Mozilla Firefox backup!
Download your free 30-day trial now trial version programs with all available tools!

Today, Mozilla Firefox is perhaps the most popular and in-demand browser. What made it so was freeness, simplicity, safety, high speed work and years of hard work of developers. And also extensibility. Exists great amount various addons, thanks to which you can significantly expand the functionality.

The possibilities provided by these small additions are truly enormous. With their help, you can download files from closed sources, block ads, send files via , publish notes, synchronize data, and perform many other useful operations.

However, using plugins also has its disadvantages. Firstly, not all plugins are reliable. Each of them is a potential security hole. Secondly, the user becomes accustomed to a certain set add-ons, without which working in the browser no longer seems so attractive and productive.

The user will inevitably encounter this problem when running Mozilla Firefox on another PC or when reinstalling the operating system. However, problems can be easily avoided if you use additional tool called FEBE.

What is FEBE and what is it for?

The irony is that FEBE is also a plugin, although not quite an ordinary one. With its help you can create a complete set of all installed Firefox extensions, as well as bookmarks, logins, passwords, cookies, skins, history data and custom settings. By downloading such a copy into the “ordinary” Mozilla Firefox browser, you can restore the usual functionality in a matter of seconds.

You can download and install FEBE completely free from the official Firefox website. You can access the plugin tools from the main Mozilla menu Firefox.

The following functions are available in the FEBE drop-down list: Create backup, Load latest backup, Restore (all or individual components), Restore profile, Quick backup and global settings.

However, before starting backup, let's take a quick look at the settings of this tool.

Basic settings of the FEBE plugin

The optional FEBE window has several sections. The “What to backup” section contains basic settings presented in three separate tabs.

In the “Backup Type” tab, you can select any of four backup types: Custom, Full, Both and Alternative. In most cases, using the selective copying method is recommended. On the right is a list of additional objects: ccookies, browser history, settings, etc. If you want them to also be included in the backup, check the boxes next to the selected entries.

The “User Objects” tab contains tools that allow you to copy and restore any Mozilla Firefox object (folder or file). If desired, it can be included in the general backup. The Ignore List option is intended to create a list of exceptions.

The next section “Where to backup” contains settings for the destination directory. Here you can specify the final directory for saving backups, set the maximum number of copies in one directory, and add the date and time to the backup name.

The “When to backup” section is a very ordinary task scheduler. It is disabled by default. Daily, weekly and monthly backups are supported.

In addition, the scheduler can be configured so that a backup will be automatically created when starting, or, on the contrary, shutting down the browser.

In the “How to backup” section you will find General settings FEBE. You don't have to change anything here. If you do not have sufficient competence in fine settings Mozilla extensions Firefox, the “Advanced” section can also be skipped.

As for the “Box.net” tab, it will only be useful to those who have an account in the Box.net cloud storage. This means that backups created with FEBE can be stored not only on local computer, but also on the Internet.

How it works

Actually, that's all about the settings. Now you can proceed to directly creating a backup copy. Go to the main menu, select Backup Utilites → FEBE, and then the “Create a backup” option. After a couple of seconds backup, according to established settings will be created and placed in the specified folder. This will generate an HTML page containing the results of the work performed.

In some cases, FEBE may display various warnings, for example: “The userChrome backup was not created!” or “The search plugins were not backed up!” etc. This is not an error, but just evidence that the plugin could not find user files userChrome and userContent.

By default these files are not present, they are created by the user and store various settings, for example, the userChrome.css file contains style settings. Next, the date the copy was created, the number of processed objects and their names will be indicated.

The backup copy is a regular folder with files. You can also use the quick backup function, in which case the backup will be presented in the form single file with XPI extension. A results page is not created, and you will be informed about success or failure via a pop-up window.

Restoring Mozilla Firefox to its previous appearance

For Firefox recovery, for example, after reinstalling the operating system, the first thing you need to do is install the FEBE extension on new browser. Then go to the menu, select FEBE → Restore → Restore extensions and indicate in the list desired object or a group of objects.

If you need to restore only extensions, specify the path to the XPI files; if you need to restore cookies, specify the file cookies(default).json, and so on.

In this case, Firefox makes a request to install extensions in the same way as when installing plugins through the web interface.

We allow it, restart and voila - your browser will again become the same as you are used to seeing it.

You can install FEBE here: www.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/