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Emails Backup
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Jan 2008
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Hello what is the best email backup, or how can I just save the emails that I want to save like to a flash drive or something like that, my inbox is so cluttered I have 15 email address and so much coming in sometimes.
Thanks
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I just backup (be it locally or an external backup) the Mail folder inside my home user Library folder with a backup app like Intego's Backup Assistant due to the ability to do incremental backups. You can do it manually but then you'll be overwriting the whole folder once and again instead of keeping the old stuff while only adding new stuff like incremental backups do.
Either that or right click on the mailbox-es you want to backup and select "Export Mailbox…" from the contextual menu. The later is accessible from the gear icon at the bottom of Mail's sidebar as well. Check "Export all subfolders" at the bottom of the sheet being shown to include any subfolder a given account would have.
To import the mailbox-es back to Mail, you just have to choose "Import Mailboxes…" from Mail's File menu.
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Clinically Insane
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Sorting into diffence folders/mailboxes, in part using automated rules (in Mail preferences), and exporting old archives using the "export" command as described by angel.
As for incremental backups: is there any reason to use Intego's software over Time Machine?
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Clinically Insane
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If these are all IMAP accounts why do you need a backup?
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I don't think Intego Backup Assistant is meant to replace Time Machine. I use Intego's to regularly backup just five critical folders into different hard drives at the same location (Mac Pro). I could even use optical drives [joke placement], or FTP as means for backup.
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Clinically Insane
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I hope nobody uses FTP for backing up important stuff, that's not a really good idea.
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Addicted to MacNN
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besson, do you mean it is not safe.? I have a Box account set so I can access it via WebDAV with Panic's Transmit but I don't use it to backup important stuff cause I can't trust such services. I read SpiderOak is 'safe' or at least safer than other services but I still refuse to put anything important on the cloud. Am I being behind the times.?
Apologies to the OP for kind of derailing the thread.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by angelmb
besson, do you mean it is not safe.? I have a Box account set so I can access it via WebDAV with Panic's Transmit but I don't use it to backup important stuff cause I can't trust such services. I read SpiderOak is 'safe' or at least safer than other services but I still refuse to put anything important on the cloud. Am I being behind the times.?
Apologies to the OP for kind of derailing the thread.
Most if not all cloud services are going to be safer than FTP, yeah.
It's all about encryption, and with FTP your password is sent in the clear each time you connect, along with all other traffic. If you can find a host that provides SFTP that would be fine, but regular FTP was not implemented with security in mind.
My personal setup on my personal computers is just a local Time Machine network backup to a Ubuntu Desktop, and on my servers I do Duplicity backups to Amazon S3 (reduced redundancy storage), and rsync backups to the same Ubuntu machine for redundancy to my backup. Redundancy, in addition to encryption, is important.
However, again, if we are talking about IMAP accounts backing up your local cache is really not going to accomplish very much. If you are certain that your IMAP host does not backup your mail and you feel uncomfortable about that, I'd suggest looking at a script like imapsync to clone your mailbox to another IMAP account daily.
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Originally Posted by Nassifer
Hello what is the best email backup, or how can I just save the emails that I want to save like to a flash drive or something like that, my inbox is so cluttered I have 15 email address and so much coming in sometimes.
Thanks
Select one or more mailboxes to export.
To select mailboxes that are next to each other (contiguous) in the list, hold down Shift as you click the first and last mailbox. To select mailboxes that are not next to each other in the list, hold down Command as you click each mailbox.
Choose Mailbox > Export Mailbox, or choose Export Mailbox from the Action pop-up menu (looks like a gear) at the bottom of the sidebar. Choose a folder or create a new folder where you want to store the exported mailbox, and then click Choose. Mail exports the mailboxes as .mbox packages. If you previously exported a mailbox, Mail does not overwrite the existing .mbox file but appends a number to the filename of the new export to create a new version, such as My Mailbox 3.mbox. All these work as above. I do this and backup to a EHD just in case of catastrophic failure.
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Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Dec 2001
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On the premise the we should back up all our data, how is email different? I use SuperDuper to b/u nightly to 2 external hds, in the process my Identity in Microsoft User Data, which contains the emails, is b/upd. Do you need a separate email b/u?
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by jmiddel
On the premise the we should back up all our data, how is email different? I use SuperDuper to b/u nightly to 2 external hds, in the process my Identity in Microsoft User Data, which contains the emails, is b/upd. Do you need a separate email b/u?
If your IMAP email and all of your folders are stored on the server you can actually skip backing up your local email cache entirely, because there is no real point to do so.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
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Of course there is!
If something is deleted on the iPhone, it is automatically deleted on all synced devices.
Local backups are still the only way to retrieve something erroneously deleted.
Well, apart from going through provider backups.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot
Of course there is!
If something is deleted on the iPhone, it is automatically deleted on all synced devices.
Local backups are still the only way to retrieve something erroneously deleted.
Well, apart from going through provider backups.
And how do you recover mail from your local cache? For starters, the second you launch the app it is going to update the cache with what is on the server, which will not include the deleted messages - they'll be deleted locally to reflect what is on the server.
If you want an actual backup of your IMAP mailbox, a local backup is not a good way to do it. The best way to do it is cloning your IMAP mailbox to another.
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Originally Posted by besson3c
If these are all IMAP accounts why do you need a backup?
You're a fool to rely on a third party service as your only backup.
Originally Posted by besson3c
And how do you recover mail from your local cache? For starters, the second you launch the app it is going to update the cache with what is on the server, which will not include the deleted messages - they'll be deleted locally to reflect what is on the server.
If you want an actual backup of your IMAP mailbox, a local backup is not a good way to do it. The best way to do it is cloning your IMAP mailbox to another.
Restore the email from TM.
Cloning your mailbox is worse than backing it up. A clone is just a backup without versioning.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by mduell
You're a fool to rely on a third party service as your only backup.
Restore the email from TM.
Cloning your mailbox is worse than backing it up. A clone is just a backup without versioning.
I don't rely on a third party service as my only backup.
You'd have to nuke the client's preferences in order for it not to connect to the server to do another sync, or else disable interent access and hope that your client will let you browse through your cache. Most people are not savvy enough to do this, but as I think about this, you're right, there is no better alternative really since an automated backup of the IMAP mailbox is out of the reach of most people too.
What I'd probably recommend for people that need email backups is a host that provides access to backups, but I guess you're right, a TM backup would be at least a good fallback, and in the event you needed to restore from TM you'd have to just hope that your email client cached the message(s) you were interested in, and TM backed up the cache.
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Clinically Insane
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If you're using Apple's Mail (which is the default), every Email is saved as an individual file locally, and those files are backed up by time machine.
What is the problem? Caches? Huh?
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You could just use Gmail and never delete anything. Ever.
Problems with this solution?
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Coming soon: Skakash
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot
If you're using Apple's Mail (which is the default), every Email is saved as an individual file locally, and those files are backed up by time machine.
What is the problem? Caches? Huh?
The problem is that you are backing up the cache, which will be overwritten the next time you fire up your mail client and what is on the server doesn't include the message(s) you want to salvage.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by Chrislove22
You could just use Gmail and never delete anything. Ever.
Problems with this solution?
You'd have to trust Google to keep your data safe in perpetuity (most likely it is), and you'd have to live with not owning your data if we are talking about the free mailboxes. If we are discussing the Business mailboxes, AFAIK you'd get both backups and no data-mining with those $8/month mailboxes.
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Originally Posted by besson3c
What I'd probably recommend for people that need email backups is a host that provides access to backups, but I guess you're right, a TM backup would be at least a good fallback, and in the event you needed to restore from TM you'd have to just hope that your email client cached the message(s) you were interested in, and TM backed up the cache.
Unless your machine was off (or Mail not running) for the life of the message, TM has a copy of it.
Originally Posted by besson3c
The problem is that you are backing up the cache, which will be overwritten the next time you fire up your mail client and what is on the server doesn't include the message(s) you want to salvage.
You say this like IMAP just clones the server to the local machine; it's not. The local storage mechanism is independent, IMAP is just the sync protocol.
The way TM/Apple Mail does it is restores the message to a local folder called Recovered Messages. Then you can move it into an IMAP folder if you want.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by mduell
Unless your machine was off (or Mail not running) for the life of the message, TM has a copy of it.
You say this like IMAP just clones the server to the local machine; it's not. The local storage mechanism is independent, IMAP is just the sync protocol.
The way TM/Apple Mail does it is restores the message to a local folder called Recovered Messages. Then you can move it into an IMAP folder if you want.
If your machine was off or Mail was not running (or your internet connection was down), it's not a foolproof backup. While a mailbox clone, my original suggestion, will not contain messages you delete, if you just decide to not delete anything you'd at least have a copy of everything up to the time of backup without having to worry about any of these aforementioned conditions, except for unsaved local drafts or of course any other folders that do not reside on the server.
I wasn't aware that Mail + TM restores to a local folder called Recovered Messages, that is definitely an elegant solution. I figured it just added the message to the cache, the same way it would if you recovered the file at the file system level with a backup recovery system that just shuttled files around and didn't do anything special for IMAP messages. Kudos to Apple for being thoughtful here!
I've actually been toying with the idea of creating a web service IMAP backup system. I'm sure I could do it and have thought about how I would, I'm just not sure about the legal stuff.
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Clinically Insane
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There is no Cache.
IMAP is used for sync only. Local storage is an .mbox folder for every mailbox/submailbox, and individual .mlnx files for every email.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot
There is no Cache.
IMAP is used for sync only. Local storage is an .mbox folder for every mailbox/submailbox, and individual .mlnx files for every email.
What the cache is stored in is not really the point, it functions as an offline cache, and a means to speed up accessing messages.
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Feb 2005
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There seem to be lots of free email archiving/backup solutions on Windows.
Not so much for Mac.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by tightsocks
There seem to be lots of free email archiving/backup solutions on Windows.
Not so much for Mac.
A Windows-based solution would be imperfect too for the same reasons. This ought to be a cloud-based service.
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Mac Enthusiast
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Originally Posted by Chrislove22
You could just use Gmail and never delete anything. Ever.
Problems with this solution?
So, I'm still confused.
Does an IMAP client like Thunderbird actually store our messages or is it just displaying them from the server?
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by tightsocks
So, I'm still confused.
Does an IMAP client like Thunderbird actually store our messages or is it just displaying them from the server?
It displays them on the server and caches a local copy for faster access and offline viewing.
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Clinically Insane
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The point is that emails are stored locally as individual files, and are backed up as such locally byTime Machine.
If you mistakenly delete anything from an imap account, you launch TimeMachine while in mail, go back as far as needed for the mail to show up, click "restore" and there it is.
I have no idea what besson is trying to say, or how it is relevant to this thread.
IMAP does not keep a backup across devices, it keeps a synced COPY, which is completely different and in no way obviates the need for a real backup, which is done most easily with Time machine.
End of story.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot
The point is that emails are stored locally as individual files, and are backed up as such locally byTime Machine.
If you mistakenly delete anything from an imap account, you launch TimeMachine while in mail, go back as far as needed for the mail to show up, click "restore" and there it is.
I have no idea what besson is trying to say, or how it is relevant to this thread.
IMAP does not keep a backup across devices, it keeps a synced COPY, which is completely different and in no way obviates the need for a real backup, which is done most easily with Time machine.
End of story.
But this isn't the complete story.
You are right that Mail + TM make for a great combo in terms of how thoughtful the recovery process is, but:
1) In order for you to have a complete backup this requires that Mail be open at all times, and that your internet connection is working at all times (and obviously that TM is running too, but that much is obvious). This is the best that the layperson can do realistically, but is imperfect.
2) This only works this way with OS X Mail, AFAIK. With other Mail clients you'd have to deal with the problem I've described above.
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Dedicated MacNNer
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There's always a chance of data loss and no provider will guarantee against it. That said, does anybody using IMAP actually run their own backups? Nobody I know of. :shrug:
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by pottymouth
There's always a chance of data loss and no provider will guarantee against it. That said, does anybody using IMAP actually run their own backups? Nobody I know of. :shrug:
I do, and there are services for doing this:
http://backupmymail.com/
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Mac Enthusiast
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Originally Posted by besson3c
$20 a month seems rather pricey...
It looks like Thunderbird can be configured to store full messages, so wouldn't that combined with a good backup routine provide an effective email backup scenario?
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by tightsocks
$20 a month seems rather pricey...
It looks like Thunderbird can be configured to store full messages, so wouldn't that combined with a good backup routine provide an effective email backup scenario?
In my opinion, no.
Again, you are backing up a cache that will be overwritten the next time you establish a connection with the IMAP server. This is basically taking a backup of a backup, rather than a backup of the source (although my terminology here is inaccurate, it should convey the concepts I'm trying to relate here. "Cache" has evidently confused some people such as Spheric). If you used OS X Mail you wouldn't have this particular problem, but you'd be faced with the other problem I mentioned of needing to have your client running constantly and connected to the internet.
If you want a pure backup that is not subject to the same shortcomings, backup the source. There is a utility called IMAPSync that does this, although its main shortcoming as has been rightly pointed out is that it doesn't version, it just creates new snapshots. Still, if you have access to a machine that is always on where you could setup running this as a cronjob, that would give you a reliable daily snapshot. I won't geek out and suggest ways you could version based on this unless you want to get into that, but this would be at least a worthwhile piece of a backup system.
http://imapsync.lamiral.info/
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
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I don't know anybody who doesn't have their email client running permanently in the background except during production (when Time Machine is disabled anyway).
For the purposes of this thread, the executive summary is thus:
1.) Use Apple Mail.
2.) run Time Machine.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot
I don't know anybody who doesn't have their email client running permanently in the background except during production (when Time Machine is disabled anyway).
For the purposes of this thread, the executive summary is thus:
1.) Use Apple Mail.
2.) run Time Machine.
Am I the only one that gets emails at all hours of the day, and who allows my laptop to sleep, or shoves it in a bag while I'm on the go somewhere, and doesn't travel with my Time Machine network drive?
Why not let people decide which of these issues are important to them rather than reducing things to simplistic summaries that may not be sufficient for everybody?
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
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It's certainly vital to keep full backups running at all times when the computer is switched off and you're asleep.
You're of course perfectly in the right to make that point, but it really seems to me that anybody who really needs more than Mail/Time Machine have to offer is probably paying an IT department to take care of it for him.
Also, weren't you the one arguing that IMAP doesn't need a backup because it IS a backup (which it is not)?
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot
It's certainly vital to keep full backups running at all times when the computer is switched off and you're asleep.
You're of course perfectly in the right to make that point, but it really seems to me that anybody who really needs more than Mail/Time Machine have to offer is probably paying an IT department to take care of it for him.
Also, weren't you the one arguing that IMAP doesn't need a backup because it IS a backup (which it is not)?
Probably. I will say that Mail + Time Machine is probably the best option for most people, but it still doesn't hurt to understand the shortcomings of these solutions. I'm not always a fan of simplistic executive summaries, particularly those similar to "you're using a Mac, you don't ever need to worry about viruses" that, while true most of the time, provide misleading assurance for some who may be literally in need of absolute assurance, or as close to it as possible.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Originally Posted by besson3c
If these are all IMAP accounts why do you need a backup?
My email service provider got hacked over christmas. So they pulled the server with my mail accounts (and some clients accounts on it). They then discovered that the hack was the day before so their nightly backup was also compromised. So they rolled back a week, causing me and my clients to loose a weeks mail.
THEN, they didn't keep an image of the hacked server (so I could get at the mail data folders to restore. Idiots
THAT's why you should do local backups of even IMAP mail
Next weeks job is to move all my mail accounts onto a "proper" supplier.
Have looked at and like RackSpace hosted exchange at £6 per month for 25GB. Nightly inc backups and a whole months daiuly roll backs also look good.
A friend of mine's whole business failed when his hosting company went bust. They also hosted all his backup files so he lost all his clients websites, data etc and the backups in one hit.
Local backup of cloud data. Cloud backup of local data!
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by besson3c
Probably. I will say that Mail + Time Machine is probably the best option for most people, but it still doesn't hurt to understand the shortcomings of these solutions. I'm not always a fan of simplistic executive summaries, particularly those similar to "you're using a Mac, you don't ever need to worry about viruses" that, while true most of the time, provide misleading assurance for some who may be literally in need of absolute assurance, or as close to it as possible.
But that is *exactly* why we countered your bad advice!
You asked why somebody would need backups when he's running IMAP, which implies that IMAP in any way eliminated the need for a backup, or provided redundant security, NONE of which is the case.
Telling people not to bother with backups because they're running IMAP mail services is just TERRIBLE ADVICE.
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot
But that is *exactly* why we countered your bad advice!
You asked why somebody would need backups when he's running IMAP, which implies that IMAP in any way eliminated the need for a backup, or provided redundant security, NONE of which is the case.
Telling people not to bother with backups because they're running IMAP mail services is just TERRIBLE ADVICE.
It was terrible advice, but based on my not knowing about Mail's TM integration. For non-Mail users especially but also generally speaking, a server-side backup is superior (providing it exists, is accessible/restorable to end-users, is incremental, etc.), and a backup of a local cache in most cases (unless you are really savvy about it) nearly useless.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
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You can do some kind of Export and Import mailbox but it is a good idea to keep backup of mail with some third party tool. You can search online and it's very safe as per my experience.
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