As the owner of a tech site, it comes without saying that e-mail plays a vital role in my daily job. I have e-mail messages dating back to 2001. Over 8,000 relevant e-mail messages fill my mail box, and that is just the inbox! I use these e-mail records to keep track of sponsor contacts and conversations, product review sample information and messages from readers of the site. The loss of any or, dare I say, all of these e-mail records would be catastrophic. It is very important that I keep a constant backup copy of these messages, should a hard drive crash or data corruption occur. I say this with confidence… but in reality, it is easier said than done.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have a terrible memory and more often than not, I simply forget to back up my data on a regular basis. This recently came back to bite me in the butt; let me explain.
I use Outlook Express to manage my e-mail account. OE is not the best program for the job, but I have been using it since I started saving messages, it’s easy to configure and use and well, I just like it. Express does have one big flaw however; did I say big? I meant huge.
With the inclusion of Windows Service Pack 2, Microsoft deemed it necessary to force you to compress your e-mail files on a ‘regular’ basis. So, every 100 times you open and then close Outlook Express, you are prompted with the following message: “To free up disk space, Outlook Express can compact messages. This may take up to a few minutes”. Your only options are “OK” or “Cancel”. I have searched Google to no end about this, and from what I have found, there is no way to disable this “option”.
Compacting messages doesn’t sound like a bad thing, and it isn’t intended to be. This function should perform simple maintenance on your folders, making them more efficient in regards to disk space, etc. But, that is not the case.
The first time I was prompted with this message, I declined and quickly made a backup of my Outlook Express files. Then, I gladly accepted, first making sure to close any other active programs so the process could run without interruption. Compacting took only a few minutes, and all seemed well… that is, until I opened Outlook Express to find I was missing the last seven months worth of e-mail messages in my inbox! WTF!
Back to Google I went and again, I found hardly anything regarding deleted messages. I quickly learned my lesson: DO NOT COMPACT MESSAGES!
Luckily I had made a back up beforehand and simply copied and pasted my files back to the OE folder and all was well. Now, I have to click cancel every time I close Outlook Express to prevent compacting. This is a hassle yes, but it’s the only workaround I know of at the moment.
This first happened a few years ago and I have since had to press cancel every time I close my e-mail program. But, as with most things is life, there is always an exception… that one time you accidentally click “OK” instead of cancel. Those times can be costly. I lost six months of e-mails once (which I did not have a backup for) and you would think I would have learned a lesson, but no, I’m stubborn. I was struck once again about a week ago, but this time I only lost the past months e-mails. OK, something needs to be done.
I hit Google once again and stumbled upon a wonderful program, MirrorFolder. I downloaded a 30-day trial and have absolutely fallen in love with this program. MirrorFolder does exactly what the name implies; it allows you to mirror the contents of a folder and have that exact copy stored somewhere else. Installation takes only a minute or two and using the program is very easy.
Once installed, simply click on a folder that you wish to have backed up.
Here is where you select the destination folder to have your folder backed up to.
I chose to back up my Outlook Express data folder onto my back up hard drive.
Clicking the sync. options button gives you the menu you see above. Here you can fully customize how and when you want your file(s) to be backed up. I chose to synchronize my files when I shut down my computer at night. The program is automated and takes only a minute or so to back up my 1.61 Gb Outlook Express folder. Now, should I accidentally select compact when prompted by OE or should my primary hard drive fail, I will never lose more than a days worth of messages!
