Backup Program for Windows Mail

[Stretchman]

Hi Guys,

Does anyone know of a good, free backup program for Windows Mail? I browsed through here:

http://forum.pcmech.com/search.php?searchid=2229974

But haven't found anything yet.

[shadowpr]

What I did was just used a backup program like syncback to back up the entire mail folder.

When ever I had to format, and reinstall, I would just copy and paste that folder back to where it was.

Worked like a charm.

[Stretchman]

And did that restore all of your email addresses, contact lists, inbox messages, etc?

[shadowpr]

I'm not sure if it restored my accounts, and contacts, but it did restore all my emails and folders in my mailbox.

I had to recreate the rules i had though.

I believe you can copy the contacts folder to get those to copy. Not positive though.

[edfair]

You could make a backup folder at root of your hard drive where you can store exported address book, cookies, and favorites. And you can change the mail store location to something simpler, like a mail directory at root.. Then it is fairly easy to burn those 2 directories to CD. Changing the mail store is in accounts all the way down the chain to maintenance.
To restore the mail would require you to copy the mail direcory contents back onto your hard drive if you lost everything, then import from there.
The address book, cookies, and favorites can be imported from the CD, SFAIK. Never have tried it.

[glc]

You can't import direct from CD - you have to copy to hard drive and remove read-only attributes first.

[Stretchman]

When our family PC was running Windows XP I always used Backup Express 6.5 from geniesoft:

http://www.genie-soft.com/products/oeb/default.html

Now we have a new PC running Vista however, and although the transition has gone mostly well, i'm still searching for a similar program that's lightweight, simple to use and free. The closest thing i've found so far is Static Backup's free app:

http://www.staticbackup.com/windows-mail-backup-free/

I haven't tried it yet, but will soon. I don't believe it offers compression of email backups.