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“Thunderbird emails backed up in the AppData folder”

. . . is not an adequate backup. Get an external drive and copy the whole AppData folder over to that external drive.

To do that, quit all applications. Compress that AppData folder. Copy the compressed result (egs.: AppData.zip) and also copy the AppData folder . . . over to the external drive.

Thus, you safeguard against some step that might ZAP! some part of the contents of:

- C:\Users\YourNamePossibly\AppData\Local\

- C:\Users\YourNamePossibly\AppData\LocalLow\

- C:\Users\YourNamePossibly\AppData\Roaming\

Also, BEFORE any manual adjustments to the Windows OS Registry . . .

BACK UP YOUR REGISTRY, before proceeding.

“https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-back-up-and-restore-the-registry-in-windows-855140ad-e318-2a13-2829-d428a2ab0692“

CREATE A SYSTEM RESTORE POINT

“https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-a-system-restore-point-77e02e2a-3298-c869-9974-ef5658ea3be9“

And next, in addition, before proceeding, restart the computer.

I have my AppData folder - and all my personal files - backed up to two different hard drives. Which are then backed up to the hard drive on my older, backup laptop.

But I do it the old-fashioned way. I drag & drop individual folders from my laptop to my external hard drive.

I've been doing it this way since the 1980s. I have files on my external hard drive that began life on a 5.25" floppy disc (as my first desktop computer had no hard drive, just two floppy drives.).