Also I don't necessarily trust some of my email providers (nor my self hosted one) and soonish have to clear one out because I run out of storage.
So what tools are you using to backup your emails? Is there a service which takes care of this automatically?
I save important official docs from my mail — I even sometimes export eml files to those archive/backup folders. So all those get backed up.
The emails themselves? Not really — even though the mail folder (Thunderbird’s; not Mail.app’s — can’t trust an Apple made utility app to be part of even a half hearted backup process) is actually part my backup routine as part of one of those 3 backup tools running on my system (and 2 sync tools). But I seriously doubt I am going to find an email from a backup snapshot ever. But if I must I have that.
But I would want to — have wanted to. Maybe a dedicated tool that downloads every single mail and keeps it synced with the server in an email file format that’s most efficient for backup and querying that backup later. Or maybe tweak around Thunderbird that makes that happen.
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention — I immediately delete those official mails (like statements, bills) immediately after saving those PDFs if I have to. I think I delete 99% of email I receive (okay maybe 80-90% - not sure; you get the idea). Only personal emails are what I never delete. So I never have too much email to begin with. I do the same with photos and videos and screenshots taken - if it can be detected, it will be deleted.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/maildir-thunderbird
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Maildir
Note: Thunderbird lacks full support for maildir. This is the reason why I switched from Thunderbird to mu4e (an Emacs-based mail client) years ago. Though, some Thunderbird users say they've been using Thunderbird with maildir for years without issues.
Meanwhile, my desktop e-mail client (Thunderbird) has its own local files which are captured by a consumer online-backup solution (e.g. Backblaze) along with other documents, photos, etc. That means both local-copies of server mail, and also items which have been perma-downloaded into mailboxes and purged from the server.
In a way, my biggest worry is not backup-coverage of the bytes per se, but potential archeological issues when it comes to arcane mailbox formats. (My second-biggest worry is that my organization is terrible and Inbox keeps growing.)
I have almost every email of my life, so it's easy to find them.
I use neomutt to access my archive over SSH. And notmuch is very fast at searching all of my emails.
* https://github.com/gauteh/lieer
* https://github.com/elizagamedev/mujmap
* https://notmuchmail.org/
Yes. I have a combination of self hosted email and a vendor email provider. I access both with IMAPS. I pull down the emails with Thunderbird and never leave them on the server. I back up the local Thunderbird data folder locally then back it up to multiple encrypted SSD/NVME.
Thunderbird is a great way to back up emails. You can tell it to store everything locally. It stores everything in handy sqlite tables under the covers.
The whole process only takes about 5 minutes once every week or two. It gives me easy access to over 20 years of email which is nice to have even though I only search the old ones a few times a year.
Ideally something that runs against a local archive on PC, and has a mobile app. With instant results.
I used to use Lookout (for Outlook) and have never managed to find something as fast, simple and reliable.
Whenever I change jobs I always take a copy of all my emails and keep it in offline storage.
Arguably not always legal/compliant. But both for CYA, learned history, relevant contacts etc. it has had use for me in multiple occasions in the past
To be calm that if all email is lost - it’s not a big deal.
I find the idea of backing up whole email life silly.
You don’t back up your physical post from beginning of ages, right? You rather keep only small fraction of most valuable things while dumping once in a while all temporarily important stuff.
Email is not a goal for me, just a mean to an end.
If an email contains something I need to keep, it is transferred to my proper files.
Empty mail, happy life.
I don’t keep letters in my mailbox. I don’t see why i should keep emails either.
31 GB written and still going strong.
That being said, I started using email about twenty years ago and I probably have looked at past emails maybe a dozen times. The vast majority I never look at again.
I view old emails as all of the browser tabs I have open right now: I feel attached to them and avoid closing them. But if they all disappear I'll be fine. I'm not wasting energy backing them up.
> what tools are you using to backup your emails?
rsync and btrfs snapshots
> Is there a service which takes care of this automatically?
Cron?