Chapter 15. Back Up and Restore Your Email

A number of years ago, my computer suffered a severe hard drive crash that wiped out years of saved email. At that time, I had not yet switched to IMAP, and I backed up perhaps once a year, so most of those messages were unrecoverable. The loss was devastating, but the shame was worse: I knew better than to put all my data in one basket, but I had done it anyway. I learned a valuable lesson, and today I back up my email (along with the rest of my files) religiously. If you back up your email properly, you can recover from nearly any disaster; if you don't, your chances are slim. So please get in the habit of backing up your email regularly.