MozBackup is a useful Windows-based freeware tool that can be used for backing up the settings and add-ons installed in Firefox, Thunderbird, Flock etc with just a few mouse clicks. It currently supports backing up of Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Mozilla suite, Spicebird and Netscape settings and profiles.
On being launched it automatically detects the presence of all the supporting softwares and lists it for you to select. On selecting the software, you can either choose to backup a profile or even restore a previously backed profile. If you have multiple profiles, then you can select the profiles to backup and also what components of the profile to backup. I used it to backup my settings in Firefox and Thunderbird and it worked like a charm. All my addons, settings RSS feeds, accounts were backed up and was perfectly restored when I did so on my newly installed Operating System. I use IMAP in Thunderbird and faced no problems in restoration. However a friend, who uses POP3 said that his mails weren't restored automatically in the new install, even though he had selected that component to be backed up. Looks like the latest version MozBackup does have issues with restoring backed up POP3 mails.
You can also automate the backing up process by creating a scheduled task for it.
An important point is that you can restore the profiles in the same version you have backed up from. Trying to restore profiles in a version higher than that from which you backed up from may not work [did not work for me].
If POP3 mails not restored
If you do face such a problem then you could rename the *.pcv extension of the backup file to *.zip and extract the content to a suitable location. Then locating the mail folder, open it and copy all the folders inside it.
Then go to the location where the new installation of thunderbird has created the same folder - mail and replace its content with the backed up content.
Voila!!! all your POP3 mails have also been restored now. There you go - all settings and mails restored.
Try it out and send your feeback to the developer so that it can be improved upon.
Do drop me a line giving me feedbacks, brickbats wombats and anything else that could help improve my blog - would love to hear from you :-).
Godspeed.