Comments on: Backing up e-mail

No one approach is right for everyone, says Michael Horowitz, but here's one way to do it.

[grakn]

One option to consider...

Instead of the mid-day backup, you could set your POP or Exchange (or whatever you use) hold on to each email for 1 day before purging. If your email goes down, you can then retrieve those emails in between backups.

[ssegal123]

My Email Solution

Mike, just like you I rely on email for my living... not just my life. No email, no money.

I am not about to start using Gmail for my day to day email duty. I need multiple addresses from multiple domains.

Here is how I manage my email.

My domains are hosted with a local ISP. Every email that comes in is automatically forwarded to my blackberry, and to a backup Gmail account. I have over 20k messages in my Gmail account, and am at about 75% capacity. I then check my mail on my notebook and desktop with Thunderbird.

This works great for me because, if I am away from my computers, I can always find the email by just logging in to Gmail and searching. Same goes for the Blackberry.

I run a 0-Message Inbox policy on my Blackberry, and delete things as they come in. If I need a phone number or address from an email I use the Gmail for Blackberry client and just search for it.

On the desktop side I have Thunderbird set to download my messages. I then backup my settings and messages to a 500GB local USB disk and also to an online backup account. I am using BackupRight, $9.99 I backup like 40GB, its insurance, but cheap and they won't deny your claims! ;)

[acahyadi]

sorry ... wrong place ... my bad

im reading few articles in same time ... sorry wrong place

[dbjohnson2]

Gmail and Thumbdrives

Michael,

Thank you for sharing your email backup strategy with us.

I have a comment and a couple of questions.

Provided one uses Gmail for their SMTP server and one fetches all email to the Gmail site and uses POP3 to download this email to the client on his PC, then a copy of all incoming and outgoing email (even that composed and sent from the client) resides on the Gmail server. So the backup pretty much occurs automatically. Plus you automatically get the benefit of the anti-SPAM filters employed by Gmail. What are the drawbacks to this approach?

In a separate conversation Michael suggested I use a thumbdrive to eliminate email synchronization issues between PCs I encounter when traveling between residences. Could someone elaborate on exactly how to do this. Would the email client (Thunderbird) and the email directory be set up on the thumbdrive. Could the hard disk on the PC then be used as the backup?

Doug

ps - could anyone suggest a good step-by-step tutorial on setting up a thumbdrive to run applications. Is a launcher required? Why?

[mhinnewyork]

Portable Thunderbird post coming soon

To dbjohnson2: I'll soon make a posting about the portable version of Thunderbird.

[MichieS]

One question....

Michael,

Thanks for your series of articles.

I, too, love TBird and use it. BTW, I just backup emails by copying the whole \Profile folder to CD (every so often, but I have no need for daily backups, like you do).

BUT your comment:
>>But who would use an e-mail program that stored all your mail in a single file? :-) <<

But Thunderbird *does* store all emails in a single file!; i.e., all emails in the Inbox are linked together in one (huge) file. Or, I maybe don't understand something.

OH, you can read one message's text body by searching and viewing with a text editor (I use Metapad). But you need Thunderbird if you want to restore the whole Inbox (somehow a backup copy to let TB get at it).

[dotcomguy00]

Better solution: IMAP and a simple procmail recipe

Backup and archival of e-mail is always of critical importance. I never rely on a local computer, storage, or most importantly a proprietary e-mail file storage format to maintain my e-mail archive.

Instead, I use IMAP and keep an easily accessible and easily backed up archive server-side. With IMAP I can access my current e-mail as well as any archived mail from any compatible e-mail client anywhere. If my flash drive goes bust, I haven't lost anything.

Rather than manually moving and archiving e-mails, I use a simple procmail or maildrop recipe which copies any incoming message to a folder such as "Archive/2007/09". I can delete the e-mails from my inbox after acting on them knowing that each and every one is archived.

And backing up is as simple as making sure the Maildir is backed up. Since the e-mails are in standard plain text, they can be compressed very easily by any back up software (BackupPC in my case) Another great advantage is that since the e-mails are in Maildir format, they are portable and not locked into a mail client's file format.

[airspeed13]

Great post dot com guy. Since I am not as savy as you, could you please explain what a procmail or maildrop is that copies all you incoming messages to a archive folder??
I assume Maildir, is a mail directory. I use outlook express and my email directory doesnot provide email in plain text. Your method is exactly what I would like to do (except for the imap), is there anyway anyone could explain this to me.

thanks so much airspeed

thanks so much