EMail - A modern necessity that is evolving. Part 2 - Backup
by Keith Birchfield

How do I integrate long term information in to my life?

There are three related things to consider when answering this question:

• Backup
  • It is critical that you do not loose any part of your ideas and efforts. It is critical that you do not loose communications with your business partners. It is critical that you do not loose information or detail.
• Availability
  • It is critical that no matter where you are, that you can always access your email.
• Compatibility
  • It is critical that no matter what tool you use in the future, that you can still find any piece of your recorded life and business.

This installment to the 'Email is an Evolving Necessity' article series, is focused on Backup.

One of the primary reasons we have all grown dependant on keeping our old email, is that it contains a tremendous amount of information about things we have discussed with our business partners, family and friends.

When thinking about how to backup any data, we tend to think in terms of making a simple copy, and storing it in a safe place. This is a safe and good way to think, but it does not consider the fact that we want to keep that data integrated in our daily lives. With this in mind, it is important to compliment traditional methods with an additional three part strategy.

The Four Part Email Backup

1. Use an application to make simple copies of your email client data ( security )
2. Use an application to extract individual email files for archiving ( compatibility )
3. Use an online resource to duplicate your emails ( availability )
4. Use an application to read the archived email files, and store the content to a database ( content )

Make Copies:

Short term, near line safety.

The way to make certain you can quickly recover from a failure is to make an exact duplicate of your email client. Your live email content is the first line of availability, and is what must be present for your regular use to continue. Each email client may have different means of storing its email, so it is critical that you understand what method your client uses, and that you can find a way to make regular copies of this data in such a way as to allow quick and simple restores when disaster strikes.

Extract Individual Email Files:

Long term flexibility.

The way to make certain you can rebuild your live content in case of storage failure is to make sure each email is separate and available. The problem with many email client software is that they tend to provide value added usability at a cost. An that cost tends to present itself in the form of a single point of failure. Many email client applications store all of their emails in a single database like file. This makes doing wonderful things like searching much easier and faster. But, having all of your emails 'in one basket' leaves you very vulnerable to the laws of chance. Eventually, almost everyone, that uses emails stored in this 'single point of failure' style of email client, ends up having a problem with that email file. It becomes corrupt or otherwise unusable, and you are left with no emails at all. You can go back to your backup copies in this situation, but that leaves you vulnerable to it happening again. And, its likely that at some point your backup copies could be corrupt too. ( as a result of copying your main files which were corrupt! )

Copy to Web Mail:

Near ubiquity of your content.

The way to make sure you can get to your email content at any time, and anywhere in the world is to copy email to an online webmail service. By forwarding your incoming and outgoing email to another email account that is web based, you can be certain to be able to read, reply and query your information from anywhere that internet access is made available to you. This includes using web enabled phones! Some web based email client services are free, and offer a significant amount of storage space. This is probably the most overlooked, and perhaps the most valuable form of near line backup, since it gives you the bonus of providing the extra flexibility of remote access.

Store to a Database:

Data mining.

The way to make certain that you dig deeply in to your email, and find all of those hidden treasures of information, is to store your email content to a relational database. Many email clients have powerful search features that make finding specific emails a relatively easy thing to do. But, many times, you may find that you need to do some specific and special things while searching. You may need to find things like; all email addresses from a specific company where the emails were sent from specific people, to other specific people, in a given period of time, with important key words in the body, but not including certain words in the subject line ... well you get the picture.

 

In conclusion:

• Backup:

  • You should never rely on a single method of backup. Redundancy is a major key to disaster recovery, so be sure to consider this in your backup strategy.
    Make sure that you compliment you system backup with focused Email backup too!
    1. Consider storing the email content to a database. This provides flexible and powerful 'data mining'
    2. Consider storing each email as individual email files. This prevents worries about 'single point of failure'.

About the Author

Keith Birchfield has over 25 years of hands on experience in developing and providing systems solutions for individuals and corporate environments. Learn more by visiting http://BitDaddys.com