So I came this close to losing all my email, address book, calendar, etc., and I’m feeling the need to back it up regularly. Ideally, I’d like it backed up daily, invisibly by some background process. What I have in mind is something like the unix rsync, which will maintain a copy of a bunch of files on a remote server. The problem is that my email client is MS Outlook, which means I have one big-ass file, 2gig and rising in my case. So syncing it means copying this file each day. I’d really prefer some incremental approach.
Any thoughts?
Ideally, I’d like to use linux as the back-end server.
You could create extra local folders to hold all your old emails. That would divide the big ass file into smaller asses, and only the most recent one(s) would ever change and need to be backed up periodically.
Or you could go in and save each individual email as a .eml file (tedious, I know). Funny, I took a UNIX class in college but don’t remember any of it, so can’t advise which of these options would be better.
What version of Outlook are you running? In Outlook 2002 and earlier, there is a 2GB limit on the size of an Outlook Personal Folders file (*.pst file). If you get it any larger than that, there is the possibility of file corruption and data loss. Outlook 2000 SR-1a will not let the pst file get larger than about 1.8GB just to avoid this problem.
Outlook 2003 can create pst files larger than 20GB, but I don’t believe that they are backward compatible.
I think you should create two or more archive files. Only write new items (messages, contacts, etc.) to one and leave the others untouched. That way, you only need to back up the current file regularly. The older ones can be backed up once, and then you can store the backups away safely. If you’ve got a CD writer, you might want to keep the archive files at about 600MB each so that each nicely fits on a CD-R.
You didn’t say it was an option, but one nice thing about Netscape/Mozilla browsers is that they store the content of their user files as plaintext. So even if the mail file gets “functionally” corrupted and the mail client refuses to open it, you can still open it with a text program yourself and read what was in it.
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cityboy916, if I understand correctly, unfortunately, those sound like ongoing work; I’m hoping for something that’ll just keep a backup in the background.
SMTWTFS, I’m using Outlook 2003, so the 2G limit isn’t a problem.
LionelHutz405, thanks for the recommendation. I’m checking it out.
What I really have in mind is a replacement for the .PST file, if that’s even possible.
Alternatively… I really know nothing about the back-ends of email systems. Does IMAP maintain a copy of everything in the back-end? Does it also maintain a copy on the client? Are there other alternatives to my current POP3 setup, that will maintain a copy elsewhere, and still use MS Outlook on the front-end?
what I meant was something like what DougC is describing, a massive set of directories and files. Or a database that can be queried selectively for changes to send remotely.
What I do is to keep the pst file in the My Documents folder. Twice a week, I back up the entire My Documents folder to CD and store the backups offsite, although your pst file is so big that you’d need to use DVDs for backups.