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Symlink: How to use Thunderbird on multiple hard drives (SSD + HDD) – 2023 Update

If you plan to use a SSD or you already use one, you should not put everything on your SSD. I recommend to keep you normal HDD as a 2nd operating system. Luckily, you can create a symlink to use your Thunderbird profiles on multiple hard drives, e.g. your SSD and HDD.

Tip: If you start Thunderbird, and it starts for 1 second and then closes, remove the folder C:\Program Files(x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird and then re-install Thunderbird

First, install Thunderbird on your SSD. Now, we’re going to create a symlinkfrom in the Profiles folder to the old Thunderbird profile on your HDD.

Summary

Creating Symlinks

1. Step Open a command prompt

2. Step Enter the following command BUT edit your username to reflect the username of your PC and change usbi09.ax to your thunderbird profile name!

mklink /J "C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles\usbi09ax.default" "D:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles\usbi09ax.default"

3. Step Next, go to C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird and open the profiles.ini file

4. Step Change the Path to your new profile e.g. Path=Profiles/usbi09ax.default

Step 4. is important because Thunderbird will use that path as your default profile. If you keep the old one it won’t work.

Need more help with creating symlinks? Read this tutorial or use this free tool to create symlinks via a GUI

If Thunderbird says it’s already open, then close Thunderbird via task manager and double-check the profile names. Else, reinstall Thunderbird