Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Este fío arquivouse. Faga unha nova pregunta se precisa axuda.

Continuous profile backup

  • 2 respostas
  • 1 has this problem
  • 21 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

QahX
QahX
more options

I currently back up most of the files on my computer with a program that watches files and uploads them to cloud whenever they change. I'm wondering if this would be an effective way to back up my Firefox profiles, given that I usually have Firefox open.

I've noticed the article on (manually) backing up profiles says to close Firefox prior to copying the profile folder. Is that just to prevent users from getting tripped up by the lock file? Or is there another reason for it?

I currently back up most of the files on my computer with a program that watches files and uploads them to cloud whenever they change. I'm wondering if this would be an effective way to back up my Firefox profiles, given that I usually have Firefox open. I've noticed the [[Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles|article]] on (manually) backing up profiles says to close Firefox prior to copying the profile folder. Is that just to prevent users from getting tripped up by the lock file? Or is there another reason for it?

All Replies (2)

pg_78
pg_78
more options

I use a cloud backup program to do a daily backup (rather than continuous upload). Having Firefox open while the backup runs is no problem as long as I exclude the "parent.lock" file from the backup set. (I also exclude the cache folders, but that's to save on bandwidth and storage: including them wouldn't cause a problem per se.)

Bear in mind that Firefox writes to some files very frequently (such as places.sqlite), so your backup program will be doing quite a lot of uploading if you try to mirror every change to every file.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Another reason is that Firefox keeps some data in memory during a session and only write to the profile folder when you close Firefox or make specific changes.