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[Adriano Varoli Piazza]

On 10/23/06, Kristian Rink <kristian at zimmer428.net> wrote:
> - - Overally, you should think about whether using a proprietary tool to
> backup your data is a wise choice, since (as you already learnt) you are
> likely to need that very tool also to restore data (which sometimes is
> just not possible, for whichever reasons). Backing up TB mails (which,
> after all, are stored in mbox files) should be a breeze just using
> open-source software, so there should be no need to spend money on
> something like Thunderstor.
>
> Cheers,
> Kristian
>

Having just spent a cheerful half hour transferring my mail folders
from thunderbird to evolution in Edgy (to test, and since I was
already using evolution to hold my appointments...) I can confirm. It
should have been a matter of a few minutes, had I wanted to build a
small script in Python/Perl/shell language that did it for me.

Backing up mail from programs that use _ancient_ standards as mbox is
easy. If you want to pay for a proprietary tool to do it for you, all
the power to you, but then you get to ask the maker of said tool when
it doesn't cover what you expect. Reobtaining the mail accounts might
be a tad more difficult, since it depends on settings your provider
gives you (and the provider might change that, but it's not an
open/closed source issue at all), and on _possibly_ encrypted
passwords you might forget. Still, you can solve that hurdle too
writing them down.
-- 
Adriano Varoli Piazza
The Inside Out: http://moranar.com.ar
Blog: http://theinside-out.blogspot.com
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