Hard disks fail, computers crash, and computer files become corrupted. These are facts of everyday life in today’s computer world. Many of us have learned the hard way that making daily backups of important files is a necessity. The size of today’s hard drives makes it difficult to back up the entire hard drive. We back up our accounting program, our checkbook program, and our word processing documents. Often completely overlooked are our important e-mail messages.
The reason that many of us don’t back up our e-mail programs is that it is not an easy task. Take Microsoft Outlook 2000, for example. The e-mail data is in a personal folder file with a .pst extension, which is buried deep within the Windows Local Settings folder. This folder, by default, is a hidden folder. You have to change your folder options to even see it. Some e-mail programs like Eudora spread their files into different folders, making them difficult to gather to back up. The tools for backing up these programs are rudimentary or non-existent, leaving the end-user in a quandary.
To the rescue is a company called Silver Lake Technologies, which has developed some outstanding e-mail backup tools. Since I use Eudora as my regular e-mail program, I tried their BackDora program. Installation was straightforward, and the program is easy to use. BackDora allows you to back up all or a selected list of your MailBox files. It searches through the program and finds all of your data, your settings, and parameters. All you do is tell it which MailBoxes to back up and where to put them. If you want to back up everything, a simple click will do it.
My e-mail was a great test since I have over three years of data, more than 200 folders, and seven different e-mail accounts. Thankfully, the program created a compressed archive, which saves on space if you have bloated e-mail like mine. The program worked seamlessly. It backs up everything, including attachments, stationery, and e-mail preferences and settings. This backup program can be used to back up files for an outside mechanism like a zip drive to another area of your hard drive. It can also be used to transfer MailBox files to another computer. The Quick Backup option will even remember the parameters from a prior backup, making the process even easier. I also liked the automatic backup reminder, which can be set for the number of days that you specify. Restoring the data from the backup file was also easy. Just specify where the backup file is, click Restore, and you can restore some or all of the MailBoxes.
Tests of Outback Plus, Silver Lake’s backup for Outlook, and Express Assist, the backup program for Outlook Express, also were seamless. Outlook control files like signatures, stationary, wizard rules, etc., are all included in the backup and preserved for easy recovery. In addition to backing up everything that BackDora does, these programs will also back up your Internet Explorer favorites and cookies, an outstanding feature that I wish were also available in the BackDora version. BackDora, Outback Plus, and Express Assist work with all versions of these mail programs running under Windows 95/98/Me/2000/NT4.
If you are not currently backing up your e-mail or you would like an easier method than the one you currently use, surf over to the Silver Lake Web site as quickly as you can. Free trial versions are available at http://www.silverlaketech.com/downloads.htm
