Backup Your Mendeley Settings

Backup of Mendeley is necessary when

1. You don't want to lose your Mendelely database.
2. You are moving to a new system.

Backup Manually 

In Mendeley Desktop choose Help->Create Backup 

It will prompt you to choose file name and path for backup file.

The backup file is a zip file and used to restore wheneven you lost your Mendeley Database.

Backup Automatically Through Script 

(In Linux based systems)

The following is an example bash script to backup your Mendeley database. Normally I do backup this database to my Dropbox so that it will be convenient to recover even when your hard disc failed.

This can be run automatically at scheduled times using cron job task scheduler.  

##############################################################################
#!/bin/bash

cd /home/srinivas/Dropbox/phd/backup
# Creating info.txt
# This should be in standard format. eg. Mon Dec 29 16:37:10 2014. 
# So You should remove your timezone from the date.
date > info.txt & sed -i 's/ IST//g' info.txt


# Copying monitor.sqlite
rsync -avzt /home/srinivas/.local/share/data/Mendeley\ Ltd./Mendeley\ Desktop/monitor.sqlite /home/srinivas/Dropbox/phd/backup/

# Copying database 
rsync -avzt /home/srinivas/.local/share/data/Mendeley\ Ltd./Mendeley\ Desktop/srinivas.siripurapu@outlook.com@www.mendeley.com.sqlite /home/srinivas/Dropbox/phd/backup/


#compressing
zip mendeley_backup.zip info.txt monitor.sqlite srinivas.siripurapu@outlook.com@www.mendeley.com.sqlite
rm info.txt monitor.sqlite srinivas.siripurapu@outlook.com@www.mendeley.com.sqlite
#############################################################################

Restoring 

In Mendeley Desktop choose Help->Restore Backup

It will prompt you to choose backup file. Once you choose file and click OK Mendeley Desktop will restore you database.