You need to backup thunderbird mail and profile to tape drive, use:$ tar zcvf /dev/st0 /home/you/.mozilla-thunderbird/
To backup files to USP pen driver mounted at /media/disk, enter$ cp -avr /home/you/.thunderbird/ /media/disk
You need to backup thunderbird mail and profile to a /backup directory:# tar zcvf /backup/email-vivek-22jan2007.tar.gz /home/vivek/.thunderbird/
You can copy /backup/email-vivek-22jan2007.tar.gz file to a CD/DVD or USB pen.
Task: Restore Thunderbird mail and profile
Make sure Thunderbird is not running. Simply copy backup files from tape, USB pen or CD to your /home/you/.mozilla-thunderbird/ directory:$ tar –zxvf /backup/email-vivek-22jan2007.tar.gz -C /home/vivek
Or just copy all files from USB pen/CD to ~/.thunderbird/ directory.