local folder not suitable
I want to know if right from the setup of new email accounts if i can tell Thunderbird store the email account data in a second non-boot drive. I have a hybrid with a smaller SSD boot drive so i am trying to conserve space on the boot drive. I have multiple email accounts that add up to many gigs of data. If in the manual set up i try to point it to a D:/thunderbird/myemail folder or even create a similar one to the default(D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\ykqiypei.default\ImapMail\imap.gmail.com), it returns a not a suitable location error and refuses to to use it. Is there a way to to do this in the initial setup and is this a suitable strategy for saving boot drive space?
All Replies (4)
Only relocate account data when you know what you're doing. In order to preserve space on your SSD drive you can move the entire Thunderbird profile. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder_-_Thunderbird
I'd put your whole profile on the alternative drive. Separating out specific mailstore files fragments your mail storage and makes it harder to maintain.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb
Find the Profiles subfolder, move this to the new location and adjust profiles.ini to point at the new Profiles.
So,
IsRelative=0 Path=D:\Thunderbird\Profiles\ykqiypei.default
This article gives some indicators for what are deemed to be unsuitable locations:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Dangerous_directories_-_Thunderbird
But I must say I can't immediately see what is wrong with what you used.
Modified by Zenos
I was trying to see if i could install and put everything on my D drive right from the start instead of having to let TB create the files on my boot drive and then trying to move them and then finding out that it wont let me. Is it possible to just install it all on the D drive or is the only way to move it after the fact?
You could try starting Thunderbird with the profile manager and creating a new empty profile in the drive of your choice.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager
But given that you have already attempted to move or relocate message stores, I took it that your profile was already in use and it would be more useful to move the existing data rather than starting afresh.
There is not much space taken by an empty profile, so what's the harm in starting on C and moving it to D?
Anyway, you could use the profile manager to establish a location that Thunderbird is happy to use, then move a working profile into it. The profile manger will do the necessary tweaking to the profiles.ini file.
Note that if you move the entire profile, all that is needed to remain on the boot drive is profiles.ini. If you instead chose to move just specific email stores, you would still have address book, filters, extensions etc stored on the boot drive.