BACK UP YOUR EMAIL

[petzl]

I suggest this method

HERE And HERE

Maybe someone has a better idea?

[edit] prompted by appeal in another topic

Please create and pin a topic for how to back up everything to outside or home copies, so this never happens again. Some folks were clever enough to have them. I thought I did, but like others it appears I misunderstood how IMAP works; my home mailbox for copies disappeared along with the others.

now pinned

Edited November 5, 2011 by Farelf

[hank]

I suggest this method

HERE And HERE

Maybe someone has a better idea?

[edit] prompted by appeal in another topic

now pinned

I appreciate your pinning this where it'll be seen.

I'm hoping someone in admin. from CESMail or Spamcop/Ironport/Cisco reads this.

The earlier thread you linked above states the problem.

---------

"(Dave_L [at] Nov 2 2011, 09:05 AM) *

I use thunderbird and IMAP, rather than POP3, but have the option selected to store copies of email locally. The email is included in my daily backups onto an external drive."

in reply to

Petzl (Nov 2 2011, 05:25 AM) who wrote

"IMAP can remove you emails if the server deletes them (but will put them back when the back-up does which is going to be time consuming) ...."

--------

Thunderbird Portable comes with some warnings, don't open Spamcop with its default settings unchanged!

Someone else there mentions archiving everything to Gmail.

Some other discussions -- about other systems, in hopes Spamcop will come up with something similar:

http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/how-t...up-your-webmail May 03 2011

--------

By the way, when did "Virtual Trash" start up? I'm used to pruning out the stuff I don't want then saving what I do want to keep (or trying to save it!).

Now I see this new thing that says

"Virtual Folders: Virtual Trash

... Instead of moving messages to a centralized trash folder, messages are simply marked as deleted in the current folder they live in...."

So -- how can those be excluded if we find a way to save backup copies automatically?

Is this new feature related to the loss of mail problem?

Edited November 5, 2011 by hank

[luisalbondigas]

Other than important new mail that I leave in the server Inbox so it's at the top of the info hierarchy, and list mail that I keep in subfolders and periodically expunge, I regularly move SpamCop Mail to TBird local folders, use Mozbackup for TBird/FFox to backup the local data, Ghost image the system main drive, and perform file x file backups, all external drives that I rotate and store in physically separate areas. It all takes about an hour a week, and (up until now) gives a warm feeling of data security.

Unfortunately, my MozBackup prior to the SpamCop data loss (which will we all hope be undone today) was already three days old when the SpamCop loss occurred; thus, a conundrum. MozBackup restores are not additive. Mail received in between is lost. And, in my case personally, in exactly that time period I had to take up leadership on a project, and am faced with not knowing what to do about the (possibly) important messages received in the meantime by multiple vendors and customers. Not something I planned, but there it is. Restore from Mozbackup and attempt to contact everyone asking them to resend? And, what would happen to the mail I restore to the SpamCop servers when (as I expected would happen within a day, not more than a week), SpamCop itself performs a restore; no, I thought, best to let the professionals perform the restore (and here we are a week later....).

Now I'll have to habituate regular downloads off the SpamCop servers, and not rely on the SpamCop server for persistent storage, unless SpamCop announces some reassuring new data security policies. I can live with it, but it's far from optimal.

Bottom line, DIY periodic backups still leave the period after the backup where your data is in limbo, and DIY restores risk overwriting or complicating the service provider restores (for that data you trusted to them). What's the answer? DIY backups every day? Twice a day mornign and evening? Every ten minutes?

[turetzsr]

<snip>

and not rely on the SpamCop server for persistent storage, unless SpamCop announces some reassuring new data security policies.

...Well, consider: CES no doubt thought that its current data security policy was sufficient to avoid disaster. Nevertheless, they don't yet know, several days after the failure. And I doubt such misplaced confidence amongst e-mail service providers is limited to CES. Do you really think you should trust any service provider's (not just e-mail, for that matter) ability to keep your valuable data/ e-mails safe?

<snip>What's the answer? DIY backups every day? Twice a day mornign and evening? Every ten minutes?

...Well, there's a trade-off here. You can spend as much time and money on your own data/ e-mail security as you feel appropriate for the value of that data/ e-mail. What is the cost to you of lost e-mails? What is your assessment of the probability of valuable lost e-mails? The answer to those questions (and perhaps others that don't occur to me off-the-cuff) help determine the answer to yours. It's kind of like life insurance.

[luisalbondigas]

We'll have to agree to disagree. It's one thing to perform belts and suspenders local backups of data you are already paying to have secured externally. It's another to say that it's a law of the jungle buyer beware situation. As you say, SpamCop Mail obviously didn't intend to leave the data at risk. But, sometimes reality sucks and we hope to learn from it. Or, rather, we hope our service providers learn from it. Ultimately, it would be nice to be able to hire data security - all the backups required to provide nine nines security comfort. It's certainly not unreasonable, and I hope SpamCop Mail doesn't lose the opportunity to provide that service.

Anyway, we don't know what happened yet. Who knows, maybe there were physically isolated iterative backups taken on the fly 24x7 with six nines reliability, and it was all taken down by a brilliantly organized DDS bot attack by teams of miscreants?

Meanwhile, I'll be moving my data off the servers, sadly, because I actually would like to have ALL my mail, including deep archives, hosted and secured externally (or as the kids say, in the cloud).

[hank]

... Do you really think you should trust ...

I didn't trust. I failed to understand how local folders behave in IMAP. My bad.

Some knew and didn't get burned.

Others like me who found Petzl's post now know this can happen.

Likely some don't yet know why it happened to them.

So this is "BACK UP YOUR EMAIL"

Explanations of how you do it will help.

Explanations what not to do and what to avoid will help too.

[petzl]

I didn't trust. I failed to understand how local folders behave in IMAP. My bad.

Some knew and didn't get burned.

Others like me who found Petzl's post now know this can happen.

Likely some don't yet know why it happened to them.

So this is "BACK UP YOUR EMAIL"

Explanations of how you do it will help.

Explanations what not to do and what to avoid will help too.

Your email is coming back if not now shortly

IMAP is good and no reason to not keep using it

Just as an extra use a USB email program as well to POP say once an hour a day whatever

Thing is this not likely to happen for another 20 years

[Dave_L]

Thunderbird Portable seems to be Windows-only. I use GNU/Linux, so that wouldn't help me. But I'm sure there are other options for Linux.

Even though I use IMAP, I didn't lose any mail. Luckily, after the last outage, I saw the posts here about lost mail, so I avoided using my local client (Thunderbird). If I hadn't seen the posts, I suppose Thunderbird would have synched with the server. But still, I do daily backups that include the Thunderbird folder, so at worst I wouldn't have lost more than 24 hours of mail.

[petzl]

Thunderbird Portable seems to be Windows-only. I use GNU/Linux, so that wouldn't help me. But I'm sure there are other options for Linux.

Even though I use IMAP, I didn't lose any mail. Luckily, after the last outage, I saw the posts here about lost mail, so I avoided using my local client (Thunderbird). If I hadn't seen the posts, I suppose Thunderbird would have synched with the server. But still, I do daily backups that include the Thunderbird folder, so at worst I wouldn't have lost more than 24 hours of mail.

Yes I use Win7 32 bit not sure what portable apps are available for Linux but just using thunderbirds inbuilt back-up should help a bit? I just zip the whole lot up when it gets over 2 gig (date it "backwards 20111106 year/month/day) After 4 gigs worth I burn them to data DVD disk.

Another with Thunderbird is the PGP use is easy but you have to look for "Enigmail"

Go to "Tools" then select "Add-ons" then "Extensions"

I mention this because many email providers (companies ISP's, Goverment etc) read your mail (electronically but maybe also manually if flagged?)

I have noticed Gmail target my age (YouTube etc) and I have never given it to them? even my name is false, this seems to be from "dating companies" with Ladies my age also also other cruise-lines and so on? Don't mind the cruise lines but giving out my age? Makes me wonder what else is looked for

I get my "junk" email sent there (Gmail) from Supermarket/Cruise ships/etc which have these details and often send me "happy birthday".Bit hard to convince people but your identity is at risk and maybe PGP keys aren't such a bad idea (Very easy to use with Thuderbird and SpamCop Webmail)

[ndav]

Thunderbird Portable seems to be Windows-only. I use GNU/Linux, so that wouldn't help me. But I'm sure there are other options for Linux.

Even though I use IMAP, I didn't lose any mail. Luckily, after the last outage, I saw the posts here about lost mail, so I avoided using my local client (Thunderbird). If I hadn't seen the posts, I suppose Thunderbird would have synched with the server. But still, I do daily backups that include the Thunderbird folder, so at worst I wouldn't have lost more than 24 hours of mail.

Hmm... I'm also not on Windows (Mac OS X 'Lion' in my case). I also understood some re IMAP, enough to get myself in trouble... I had periodically dragged all emails from before the current year to a local directory (in the 'On My Mac' section, and these were not lost), but that doesn't do anything for recent (important!) email, and I hadn't done that to my wife's computer this year either... Man, she was PO'ed! I had sold her on SC. So today it finally came back and re-downloaded and indexed over several hours. Phew.

Now I'm thinking I need a more robust & automatic solution. Time machine to NAS perhaps. With periodic clones. If I can remember to do it amongst all the other chores/responsibilities...

Anyone have any insight specifically re OS X workflows/tools?

Thanks!

ndav

[luisalbondigas]

Hmm... I'm also not on Windows (Mac OS X 'Lion' in my case). I also understood some re IMAP, enough to get myself in trouble... I had periodically dragged all emails from before the current year to a local directory (in the 'On My Mac' section, and these were not lost), but that doesn't do anything for recent (important!) email, and I hadn't done that to my wife's computer this year either... Man, she was PO'ed! I had sold her on SC. So today it finally came back and re-downloaded and indexed over several hours. Phew.

Now I'm thinking I need a more robust & automatic solution. Time machine to NAS perhaps. With periodic clones. If I can remember to do it amongst all the other chores/responsibilities...

Anyone have any insight specifically re OS X workflows/tools?

Thanks!

ndav

If you're using TBird, on any OS, you can just create a filter to move all mail off the SpamCop IMAP volumes, down to your local folders. Then whatever regular backup regime you follow should also back up your mail. Me, I use MozBackup regularly, and the back files get moved over to the USB externals I use in rotation. Pretty simple. The trick is to keep the mail off the IMAP account if the provider doesn't promise backup and failover etc.

[ndav]

If you're using TBird, on any OS, you can just create a filter to move all mail off the SpamCop IMAP volumes, down to your local folders. Then whatever regular backup regime you follow should also back up your mail. Me, I use MozBackup regularly, and the back files get moved over to the USB externals I use in rotation. Pretty simple. The trick is to keep the mail off the IMAP account if the provider doesn't promise backup and failover etc.

Hey, thanks for the advice, luisalbondigas, but not sure this would work for either my wife or I... Each of us has 2-3 devices tied into our IMAP accounts and we wanted to continue being able to see & respond to any/all emails from whichever was closest at hand. IMAP was ideal until the specter of it all going away came up.

We're both happily using Apple Mail, and if a hands-free backup were available that didn't risk IMAP's clever lemming move (you lost all emails? Ok, let me delete everything too!!!), well that would be awesome. Even if it involved using TBird on the side every X days or hours. I sure hope someone has ideas on this...

[turetzsr]

We'll have to agree to disagree.

...Why? It appears to me that we're in perfect agreement. My message was that if your risk-aversion to lost e-mail justifies the cost, do it yourself; your conclusion was:

I'll be moving my data off the servers, sadly, because I actually would like to have ALL my mail, including deep archives, hosted and secured externally (or as the kids say, in the cloud).

Looks like perfect agreement to me! <g>

[hank]

... do it yourself ... <g>

Topic question is how to back up (not give up) the email on the server.

I understand there's no way yet. Trying to focus here.

Two questions, I think, sum this up:

-- how to get everything copied to the local computer and keeping copies happening routinely

-- how to change/move the copies so CESMail's IMAP can't take it away accidentally

-- how to look at the copies later.

NOTE, the backups could be PDF files for example, as long as it's readable.

So maybe routinely _printing-to-PDF_ when Spamcop mail opens?

I asked above about a new Trash system where trashed mail is kept but marked invisible.

More about that --related to backups:

-- is this going to be a problem causing backing up of invisible copies of trash we want to get rid of?

-- is there a way to be sure email _gets_ deleted that we _want_ deleted?

This new trash-by-making-invisible smells of Homeland Security to me, is it a requirement out of the idea that everyone's mail has to be kept available for government searches?

[turetzsr]

Topic question is how to back up (not give up) the email on the server.

I understand there's no way yet.

<snip>

...Perhaps I don't understand your question but I believe the answer is that the mail is backed up and can be restored on the server side. I think that's what the very first sentence of SpamCop Forum Topic "****Please read **** Email system update #8" is saying. The big problems here seem to be that (1) the e-mail admin(s) didn't seem to be certain that the restore would be complete and (2) it took so longer to recover it.

Two questions, I think, sum this up:

-- how to get everything copied to the local computer and keeping copies happening routinely

-- how to change/move the copies so CESMail's IMAP can't take it away accidentally

-- how to look at the copies later.

<snip>

...That's three questions. <g> I believe that some options to the first and last are given in the first post in this Topic 79280[/snapback] in the two links labeled "HERE."

[hank]

I appreciate the suggestions for how to make copies "by hand" and save them to other drives.

Of course I'll do that from time to time.

My question was whether there's a way to automatically create a safe copy. Apparently there is not.

A response from the CrashPlan folks -- I asked if they could back up copies of Spamcop mail as they do the other files on hard drives, automatically. They can't:

-----------------------------------------------

.... it appears that there really is no way for us to accomplish that. Since IMAP is controlled by the server and will delete what is not there, the only way that you could recover the emails would be to have a backup that was restored to a different location, but then as soon as the account synced with the email and connected to the server, they would be deleted anyway. So in essence, there would be no good way to go about it.

Have a great day ....

----------------------------------------------

[hank]

QUOTE(luisalbondigas [at] Nov 6 2011, 09:45 PM) *

" using TBird, on any OS, you can just create a filter to move all mail off the SpamCop IMAP volumes ...."

Can you spell out how to create this filter? For multiple folders?

Here's what I tried that didn't quite work

I set up Thunderbird to see Spamcop as a POP server, but it sees only the Inbox at Spamcop. So now I have the Inbox saved locally but not yet any other folders (and I have monthly sent-mail folders since 2006, plus quite a few folders kept to sort mail into by subject).

I tried just going to those folders and selecting all and forwarding ("all" doesn't get all at once but it gets some large number). But the resulting file bounced from the other mail system I use often.

Still trying things, but hoping either Spamcop/CESMail managers see the need and provide a way, or else someone can walk me through this.

[luisalbondigas]

QUOTE(luisalbondigas [at] Nov 6 2011, 09:45 PM) *

" using TBird, on any OS, you can just create a filter to move all mail off the SpamCop IMAP volumes ...."

Can you spell out how to create this filter? For multiple folders?

<SNIP>

As far as I can see, TBird filters are set up and work on a folder by folder basis. Yep, bummer. For all my myriad sub-folders and their thousands of messages, I just dragged them down off SpamCop to local, and no longer use SpamCop filters to move them into sub-folders on SpamCop. Basically, I'm now only using the SpamCop Inbox, Held Mail, and no sub-folders (with one exception that's not germane here).

For TBird, what I have done is to create the same filter for each top level Inbox in the five accounts I'm currently loading in TBird, including the SpamCop Mail top level Inbox. (Those five, and others that I used to point to SpamCop for consolidation I'm now collecting individually as TBird accounts. Perhaps later I'll find another consolidation service with clear data security policies. Until then, I'm doing it myself.) I used a "size > 0k" criterion, with Move to a local folder that acts as my main Inbox (now that I don't marshal all my mail through SpamCop). Unfortunately, I have to do it for each top level Inbox. As it turns out, though, I am now for the first time making use of the TBird Unified Inbox feature, to see all the five account top level Inbox messages in one virtual folder. From there it's easy to just drag them down to my local marshaling folder in one move. Not optimal for those days with hundreds of messages, but it's working for now; one can switch back and forth from individual and unified folder views, as I do, to manage the freight as well. I've got my eye out for a TBird add-in that will facilitate filter actions across multiple folders. That would be nice.

It's too bad, really. The SpamCop Horde implementation is very nice, well evolved and thought out. Works very well. Oh well..

[charliedawgs]

Most useful email backup program is 'MailStore' where rather than normal way backup it works by importing email into its own store. Other method is:

- In Windows Explorer go to your Outlook folder, highlight all files ending in ".pst" then select edit/copy from the menu to copy the selected files. Now open the folder where you want to put your backup copies in Windows Explorer, edit/paste from the menu to paste your .pst files to the backup location.

Your backup copy of outlook data is now in place, when you need it ready to be restored.

[edit] Live commercial link in member signature de-activated

Edited November 17, 2011 by Farelf

[StevenUnderwood]

Most useful email backup program is 'MailStore' where rather than normal way backup it works by importing email into its own store.

I just checked out the MailStore program referenced by charliedawgs and there are 2 versions. A commercial program and a free home version which also includes a portable app that can be installed on a flash drive.

My current configuration: My wife and daughter (and soon my son) each have their own gmail accounts which they access directly either via web or IMAP. For archive (and monitoring of the children), I have their gmail accounts setup to forward all messages to my spamcop account, leaving the original on the gmail server for them to access. My own gmail account is set to forward to spamcop and delete since I only access the spamcop account everywhere via IMAP. I'm currently using the MailStore program to archive messages from my spamcop account and delete all but the last 30 days. I could have MailStore access each individual account, but then I would need their passwords kept up to date.

The main drawback for me is that network storage is not supported. I wanted to install it on the hard drive I have attached to my router forming a NAS device but it comes up with a warning that only local storage is supported. As a work around, I installed the portable version on a local disk (C:\MAIL), archive the mail from there, and have a robocopy scri_pt to archive the entire directory to my NAS (\\fileserver\USBDisk\MAIL). I created another scri_pt to copy the archive (program and data) to the local C: of whatever machine runs the scri_pt so that my wife or I can access our old emails. I just need to make sure I update the network copy whenever I archive.

The only other drawback which I have not fully investigated is that I don't think I can fully automate the archive as I would like to have it run once a week without needing to interact with the program. You can create a shortcut of the archive step on the desktop which brings up the application (thus the machine would need to be logged in). Perhaps I will add it to my login on the desktop (used only occasionally by me) to archive email and backup to network.

[hank]

> MailStore

Free home version is for Windows-only:

Version 5.0.1 - Freeware

For Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003, 2008

This is the link to the free version, explicitly:

http://www.mailstore.com/en/mailstore-home.aspx

Still not the answer I'm hoping for, but useful for some folks.

I asked over there whether it can handle subfolders, with a pointer back to this discussion:

http://getsatisfaction.com/email_archiving...cop_sub_folders

> luisalbondigas ...

> I've got my eye out for a TBird add-in that will facilitate filter

> actions across multiple folders. That would be nice.

That sounds like the answer I'm hoping someone will find.

Edited November 29, 2011 by hank

[StevenUnderwood]

I asked over there whether it can handle subfolders, with a pointer back to this discussion:

I only use IMAP connection to SpamCop and that can definitely select any/all subfolders on the server. I only use grab Inbox and Sent Items for my use.

[hank]

Confirming, MailStore (free for home use) will do what's needed.

MailStore is Windows-only

With a Windows license you can run it using VirtualBox on a Linux or Mac host.

[hank]

So MailStore works great, run manually.

Just lost all the individual emails in my Inbox though, and it'd been a couple of weeks since I did the last MailStore archive.

Support hasn't found the missing mail. Anyone else lost any lately?

[hank]

MailStore detected corruption in CESmail I think.

It told me, a couple of days ago, it found three pieces of email timestamped 1969 that it could not archive.

Today, it does not find those at CESmail/Spamcop.

It's also found a few pieces of mail in old sent-mail folders from over a year ago that it did not detect two days ago.

And it's found two pieces of email in the current sent-mail folder from 1/13 that it did not detect two days ago.

Odd.

I am sure glad I have MailArchive.

Now if I can get it to run automatically, I'll begin to feel I can trust email again, a bit.