Ask HN: Do you backup your Emails?

16 points · michidk · 6 hours ago

I wonder if its just me or other people feel the urge as well to backup their emails. I feel oddly attached to my older emails and have the fear of loosing something important which might hide in my mail archives.

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?


45 comments
· 22 minutes ago
[deleted]
crossroadsguy · 1 hours ago
My mail provider does some kind of periodic backup which they do out of their own goodness of heart even though they don’t have to (that what they say).

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.

Show replies

subsection1h · 1 hours ago
Seeing people in this thread say that they delete all their emails is super weird. I'd like to know their job titles, ages, etc. Do they not use email to converse with their lawyers, business associates, etc.?
dnel · 1 hours ago
I have about 11 years archived as annual maildir tarballs. I archive using thunderbird and export them when I remember to. I don't know why I bother, I almost never need anything from them.
lbhdc · 2 hours ago
No, I stopped even reading my email unless something prompts me to retrieve something from it.