How to backup your email

esnagel

Director of Common Sense
What would you do if your computer crashed, and you lot all of your email? It could be a strike of lightning, or a virus, or a hardware failure. All your email is lost. And your contacts. Oh, don't forget those family photos and your entire MP3 collection.

Backing up data is essential. Consider these stats:
  • One in every ten hard drives fail each year.
  • 43% of computer users lose irreplaceable emails, documents, photos and other files.
  • Only 3 out of 100 stolen laptops are ever recovered.
  • Thousands of files are lost each year to fires, floods and other disasters.

So you buy an external hard drive and some backup software, and make backups. That's fine, until the virus in your system infects the networked drive as well. And fires don't burn around your backups.

Then what's the solution? Simple, affordable, offsite backups. Carbonite offers unlimited backups for just $49.95 per year. That's less than 14 cents per day. To see if Carbonite is right for you, check out the free trial available – you don't even need a credit card!

When you install Carbonite, if you chose the recommended default option, 'Automatically back up My Documents and Desktop', when you first installed Carbonite, your email will be backed up by default, assuming your email file is less than 4GB.

However, sometimes you may need to manually select the e-mail data file.

Microsoft Outlook data files are typically stored in C:\\Documents and Settings\\{your_user_name}\\Local Settings\\Application Data\\Microsoft\\Outlook\\

Microsoft Outlook Express stores your address book in one location and your e-mail files in another:

  • Typically, your address book is stored in C:\\Documents and Settings\\ {your_user_name} \\Application Data\\Microsoft\\Address Book\\.
  • Your e-mail files are typically stored in C:\\Documents and Settings\\ {your_user_name} \\Local Settings\\Application Data\\Identities\\ {long_alphanumeric_code} \\Microsoft\\Outlook Express\\.

When you find the files, right-click on the file or folder, go to the Carbonite option, then select Back this up.

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You'll see the Carbonite indicator on the file's icon: a green dot means it's backup, a yellow dot with a red outline means the file will be backed up, and no dot means it's not going to be backed up.

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That's it! Your files will be backed up to Carbonite's servers, and you can rest easy. Of course, there are many different options for remote backups. Read reviews of online backup services, and pick the right one for you.
 
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