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Can I safely avoid backing up certain profile db files?

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  • Last reply by Toad-Hall

David Collins
David Collins
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In an effort to make hourly TimeMachine backups on my mac (Sierra) more efficient I archived a lot of the mail folders in my Thunderbird profile, and that helped. But I noticed there were still some big files in the profile (message search index for example) that had gotten large over the years ... and since they get touched often, they end up being backed up several times a day.

The specific culprits in the profile are: global-messages-db.sqlite panacea.dat places.sqlite

If I omit just these files from backups (but still backup everything else in the profile, including the message folders), what consequences would there be if I had to recover the profile to the state it was in in the most recent backup that occurred before it was corrupted? What searching capability might I lose? Would thread relationships be lost?

In an effort to make hourly TimeMachine backups on my mac (Sierra) more efficient I archived a lot of the mail folders in my Thunderbird profile, and that helped. But I noticed there were still some big files in the profile (message search index for example) that had gotten large over the years ... and since they get touched often, they end up being backed up several times a day. The specific culprits in the profile are: global-messages-db.sqlite panacea.dat places.sqlite If I omit just these files from backups (but still backup everything else in the profile, including the message folders), what consequences would there be if I had to recover the profile to the state it was in in the most recent backup that occurred before it was corrupted? What searching capability might I lose? Would thread relationships be lost?

Modified by David Collins

Chosen solution

global-messages-db.sqlite This file is an index of all of your messages created by the global search engine (gloda). Can be deleted if db is corrupt or search isn't working correctly - it will be rebuilt.

So if profile does not contain it, then when thunderbird restarts, a new one will be created.

panacea.dat This file is a Mail folder cache. It can be safely deleted to resolve various issues. Same as above, a new one would be auto created.


places.sqlite 

a new one would be auto created when Thunderbird starts.

(side note this file in Firefox will contain your bookmarks)

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Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Chosen Solution

global-messages-db.sqlite This file is an index of all of your messages created by the global search engine (gloda). Can be deleted if db is corrupt or search isn't working correctly - it will be rebuilt.

So if profile does not contain it, then when thunderbird restarts, a new one will be created.

panacea.dat This file is a Mail folder cache. It can be safely deleted to resolve various issues. Same as above, a new one would be auto created.


places.sqlite 

a new one would be auto created when Thunderbird starts.

(side note this file in Firefox will contain your bookmarks)