Before I heard of Portable Thunderbird I tried -- successfully but not enough for me -- to do this myself using mainstream Thunderbird and just inputting the removable drive as the installation directory.
This was a Windows 10 Dell laptop that had had the previous installation of Thunderbird on its C: drive deleted, including ALL Mozilla/Thunderbird directories. The removable drive (D:) was an SDHC.
The new Thunderbird was 78.2.2 and the custom install settings were:
Install Location D:\Mozilla Thunderbird\
Install Maintenance Service
I used the Thunderbird Profile Manager to create a profile directory on the D: drive as well -- D:\username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\code.default\ -- and copied in the contents of the old Thunderbird profile.
I then ran Thunderbird and it worked perfectly, appearing just as it was in the old Thunderbird.
However, I found that these directories on the C: drive had been recreated:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\ [empty]
C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\Mozilla\ [empty]
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\ [not empty]
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\ [not empty]
C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Maintenance Service\ [not empty]
C:\ProgramData\Mozilla\ [not empty]
While these directories don't seem to contain personal data, they do contain update, extensions, and settings data. To a hacker these could be even more useful than personal data -- just hack the program code to send emails to them as well. All these directories should be on the removable drive too.
After a little research to fix this I came across Portable Thunderbird. I downloaded and installed ThunderbirdPortable 78.3.1 into D:\username\ThunderbirdPortable\. I created D:\username\ThunderbirdPortable\Data\profile\ and copied the contents of the last profile into it.
I ran ThunderbirdPortable.exe and it worked perfectly, appearing just as it was in the last Thunderbird.
I immediately checked and none of the recreated directories listed above existed.
But then I did Help -> About Thunderbird. This showed Thunderbird, not Portable Thunderbird, and version 78.3.1, but automatically did an update to version 78.3.2.
I then checked and found:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\
C:\ProgramData\Mozilla\
So my question is: should Portable Thunderbird not be updated like mainstream Thunderbird, making the automatic such update in Help -> About Thunderbird a bug?
Or are these C: directories supposed to exist in Portable Thunderbird, making it not much more portable than mainstream Thunderbird?
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Many folders will exist outside the ThunderbirdProfile directory while Thunderbird is running due to the way Thunderbird itself works. These will be removed and any existing local data restored on exit. A majority of portable apps work in this fashion.
The profile manager does not work portably and will only "see" local profiles. This has been a limitation of profile management in all Mozilla apps since its creation.
As long as you run via ThunderbirdPortable.exe (or the PA.c Platform) it will be portable. The preferred way of updating is via the platform, the second is to do it manually (as described on the support page. If you allow Mozilla apps to update themselves, they will successfully update and then be portable, but they may leave some non-personal empty folders or files behind.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Forget Thunderbird Profile Manager. I only used it with mainstream Thunderbird. You made it very clear that Portable Thunderbird can only use one profile and expects it in Data\profile. (But apparently Portable Thunderbird still has Profile Manager in it, which it shouldn't.)
From your link, I finally found the Portable Thunderbird update documentation. (I had expected at least some mention of it in the Portable Thunderbird specific documentation; I didn't look in the Portable General documentation.) That documentation indicates Portable Thunderbird should not be updated like mainstream Thunderbird, such as in Help -> About Thunderbird.
You imply that it is no big deal if you do though; it will just leave some non-personal files behind. However, one or more of those files is something like C:\ProgramData\Mozilla\updates\code\updates\0\update.mar
"MAR files can be used to manually update a Mozilla program without opening it, which can be useful for system administrators" ... and hackers.
You should not allow Portable Thunderbird to update itself as in Help -> About Thunderbird.
Which brings me to: You say things like "due to the way Thunderbird itself works". I expected you were actually modifying the mainstream Thunderbird source code to make Portable Thunderbird, but it sounds like you are just writing a wrapper for mainstream Thunderbird. Is this true? If so, that's unfortunate since it's so restrictive.
I looked through the mainstream Thunderbird source code. Unfortunately, it's a mess, having been torn from the original Mozilla browser. Still, if you are going to devote a lot of time to a portable Thunderbird, that would be the way to go.
Modifications of Thunderbird itself are not permitted in our licensing arrangement with Mozilla. I personally wouldn't trust a third party build of it due to its complexity.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!