What would your reaction be if you discovered that you have lost all your emails and that there is no possibility of recovering them?
It is important to understand that corruption happens - hard drives may fail and mistakes will erase data. Maintaining regular backups of computer data (including emails) is of critical importance. Backing up is simply making an electronic copy of data files and storing that copy in a safe place. The underlying information will focus on backing up email.
A variety of email backup solutions is available on the market. IT Services recommends the use of the freeware tool – MozBackup – to create and restore backups of email, contacts etc. in Mozilla Thunderbird.
MozBackup works on MS Windows (including MS Windows 7/Vista) based systems and is available for
download.
MozBackup provides a user-friendly step-by-step process to create backups of Thunderbird email:
- Launch MozBackup and click Next button.
- Tick the option Backup a profile and click the application to backup i.e. Mozilla Thunderbird*. Click Next button.
- Select the profile you want to backup. Probably this will be the default.
- Click Browse... button to select the location where the backup file will be saved. Initially it is advisable to save the file on the Windows desktop. The name of the backup file will have a date (in reverse order) and an extension pcv. Click Next button.
- If you would like to set a password-protected backup file, click Yes button and enter a password.
- Tick the details you want to backup. Click Next button.
- Click Finish button on the Report dialog box.
It is now important to copy the backup file located on the Windows desktop to a secondary storage medium e.g. CD, DVD or USB disk. The storage media should be stored away from your computer.
The backup process should be performed on a regular basis.
*MozBackup can be used to backup Mozilla Firefox history, bookmarks, cache etc.
To restore the backup file:
- Launch MozBackup and click Next button.
- Tick the option Restore a profile and click the application to backup i.e. Mozilla Thunderbird. Click Next button.
- Select the profile you want to backup. Probably this will be the default.
- Click Browse... button to locate the backup file to be restored. The name of the backup file will have a date (in reverse order) and an extension pcv. Click Next button.
- Tick the options to be restored and click Next button.
- Click Finish button on the Report dialog box.
2 September 2010
http://www.um.edu.mt/itservices/students/email/backup
