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In a cloned version of my hard drive, where would I find emails that were stored under "Local folders"? Are they lost now that the original hard drive died?

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  • Last reply by Gnospen

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I have a cloned version of my old hard drive from an old computer, which does not boot properly. I now have a new computer and would like to access the emails that had been stored in "local folder" in Thunderbird. I have searched the clone, but so far haven't come up with anything. Is there a particular file extension I should search for? Or is it possible that the clone doesn't have those files? Both the old and new computers are MacBooks.

I have a cloned version of my old hard drive from an old computer, which does not boot properly. I now have a new computer and would like to access the emails that had been stored in "local folder" in Thunderbird. I have searched the clone, but so far haven't come up with anything. Is there a particular file extension I should search for? Or is it possible that the clone doesn't have those files? Both the old and new computers are MacBooks.

All Replies (5)

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You need to look for your profile.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb

I'm not familiar with Macs, but on Windows and Linux the folder is hidden.

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Thank you for the link. The profile must be really well hidden. I found the Library folder, and there's a Mozilla folder in there, but there isn't a Thunderbird folder, unless it's within another folder. Any other hints? I tried searching for any of the keywords and file extensions I could think of (and are mentioned in the link you gave me) including .default, but I don't know what the random 8 digits would be.)

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profiles.ini might be a productive filename to seek. You could look for folders named Mail and ImapMail, and files named Inbox (note: no extension!)

The lack of anything responding to a search for *.default is worrying. I'm starting to think that your clone process missed the Thunderbird profile. :-(

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I think so too--I would have spotted something related by now if it was there. Thank you for the great suggestions. Maybe I can get a second look at the old hard drive if I take it back to the Apple dealer that created the clone.

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I would Not look for TBird under roaming/mozilla/ but under roaming/

Or open under help fail-search information and a bit down you have a button open profil-folder

(It could be similar names thou, mine are in swedish)