Backing up with Google!

cormie

Hi, just looking for some advice on backing up. I recently bought a new laptop so will be migrating from WXP to W7 and before I do, I'd like to sort out backing up my emails so in the event anything ever happens, I still have access to them all.

My current set up is:

Laptop: Thunderbird with 4 different email accounts
Phone: Android, 2 of the above 4 accounts are set up on this, don't need the other two on the go. Also on my phone I use google to store contacts.
Web: I do have a Gmail account but I use it only for logging into the likes of google docs, contacts, adwords etc.

3 of the above email accounts are hosted on blacknight, the other, eircom, then gmail one is completely separate but at the moment, I get all emails I get via gmail, also sent to the eircom account.

I don't tend to send ANY emails off my phone and generally just use it for reading new mails and then I'll reply to them once I'm back at the laptop, a big reason for this is so I'll have a copy of the sent mail on my laptop and also much prefer a full keyboard. I delete all mails as they have been dealt with off the phone. I keep all mails in a "read and replied" folder on thunderbird for each account, this is just for organisation and to make sure I'm on top of things and it works well.

I'd like to keep everything as is as it works really well for me, but I'd also somehow like an online copy of each mail, even the ones I currently have on my hard drive and which are long long gone off the server itself. I've mails from years ago on Thunderbird.

Is there any decent solution for me? Maybe that mails would go via my gmail account as well as the main accounts and then a permanent copy could be kept on gmail. I don't want to use gmail for actual composing or reading, just to have the back up there.

Any feedback or suggestions on how best to manage this would be greatly appreciated!

Also, any advice on general backing up to the web would be great to as currently I'm having to backup to an external hard drive, but if I go without doing this for a few weeks, then I could potentially lose all that work I've done if I've forgotten to do a regular back up.

What do other people use?

cookie1977

Why not get a free sugarsync account with 5GB of data storage. There's apps for android iOS and BlackBerry so you can access these files remotely from your smartphone. You can export the emails from Thunderbird and then back up that file to Sugarsync. You can then do this periodically to keep an up to date backup.

www.sugarsync.com

From then on you could route all your emails to gmail and it'll back them up.

Even if you've an online back up you should also backup to an external harddrive or two so you have redundancy in case something goes belly up.

I primarily have imap email accounts so backup is easier as everything is local and online already. I then have a paid 30GB account with Sugarsync (about 40 euro per year) and I have 2 x 1TB hard drives for offline backup

cormie

Thanks for the reply

I've never heard of sugarsync and although I'm sure it's fine, I was hoping to keep everything in the one place, such as google and in particular, gmail. I'd be hoping that the risk of anything happening would be absolutely tiny with gmail considering Google run it and if anything did actually happen, I'd still have the hard copies of mails on my hard drive with thunderbird, so gmail would be just the online archive which I never even visit, but it's just always there. Having access to the archive on my smart phone isn't important at all, the phone is just used as a beeper in a way to tell me I've got mail, I can read it if I want but 99% of the time I won't reply, unless absolutely urgent or necessary and will wait till I get back on the laptop, which usually isn't too far away.

Is it possible to route all existing and future email through gmail? I guess then I could look up services such as sygarsync for taking care of non online related things - I'd consider email an online thing and say a photo non-online if you get me

cookie1977

Are your current email accounts imap or pop?

cormie

pop, I think the servers are pop33r.cp.blacknight.com and webmail.eircom.net and says "pop mail server", I'm not sure if they are imap compatible, not even sure what imap is

cookie1977

You could add your gmail account to thunderbird as an imap account and then drag the email from other accounts into a new folder in gmail but it could take a long time if you've lots of email. Here's some tips:
http://lifehacker.com/332624/import-messages-into-gmail-via-imap

Then add the email accounts to gmail by importing them:
https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=25414&answer=164638&parent=25413&rd=3

cormie

I think the dragging thing would be a bit too much hassle alright unfortunately. Is the 2nd link in the above post a solution for just putting the other mail accounts via gmail and storing them in gmail as the process is done?

cookie1977

Yes, but it will only add new email not existing email. Make sense?

cormie

Ah yeah, maybe that won't be such an issue if I have a backup already of the mail and am just using gmail to catch and backup all future mail. I can just have a backup of all previous mail from today on a HD for example, and then not have to worry about backing up all future mail as it'll be backed up on Gmail.

Upon reading, I came to this: https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=21288

Is it the mail fetcher thing I should be setting up, or the other one do you know?

cookie1977

Either are I think to be honest.

Actually the Mail Fetcher is the one to use.

cormie

cool, what's the difference between them? Seemed the first one was just for a temporary thing and the mail fetcher is for anything more than 30 days? Can't think of any reasons to set it up for less than 30 days

cookie1977

I'm not 100% sure really. They're not very clear. It does seem the mail fetcher is more permanent.

If you were moving email accounts and shutting an old one down the 30 day temporary move would be of benefit. Thats the only advantage I can see.

cormie

Ah yeah, I guess. Cool, so thanks for your help so far, I'll go with the mail fetcher and see how I get on. Would be nice to have ALL history on Gmail somehow, but seems a bit tricky to do.

As far as the rest of the files go, you reckon something like sugarsync would be good? Any security risks with using something like that and will 5gb of space ALWAYS be free do you think? 5gb should actually be enough for the general files I have that I'd like backed up. Do you just pick a folder(s) to sync with online and it works in the background, or do you need to manually do it?

cookie1977

The best way to do all history as far as I know is to drag and drop like I described.

I wont say "Always" but they've (sugarsync) been around a long time and are a big company. I've had no problems with them in the past 2 years anyway.
You can sync any folder you like on any computer by marking it for sync or you also have a "Magic Briefcase" folder which syncs across all your computers/devices. I use a combination of both.

There's also dropbox but I'm not as fond of their system as I am of sugarsync.

www.sugarsync.com
www.dropbox.com

cormie

Thanks a lot, I'd only be using one laptop and one phone, but wouldn't require backing up of phone files at all, these are all synced with Google anyway

Will have a look into it anyway as it'd definitely be hassle to lose some files due to forgetting to back them up and if they can automatically sync with an online storage that would be nice. Is any manual process required, even opening up firefox? or is it all automated and works away in the background? Do you need to download a program?

cookie1977

cormie wrote: »

Thanks a lot, I'd only be using one laptop and one phone, but wouldn't require backing up of phone files at all, these are all synced with Google anyway

Will have a look into it anyway as it'd definitely be hassle to lose some files due to forgetting to back them up and if they can automatically sync with an online storage that would be nice. Is any manual process required, even opening up firefox? or is it all automated and works away in the background? Do you need to download a program?

It's a program that runs in the background and sync when needed (new files created or edited in the sync folders). You can run the app when you want if you'd rather manually sync.

One thing to be careful of is your broadband data limit and upload speed if you've lots of files to back up (although 5GB's isn't too much if you needed to use it all)

You can also share the files via specific links if you like or upload/download files from a web browser by logging into sugarsync.

cormie

Thanks again, broadband package is fine for that and I'd be using hardly any of the allowance anyway I'd say as I have all the "big files" backed up separately anyway on external hard drives

That should be enough to work with for now anyway

cookie1977

Any problems/questions, just post back. Good luck

cormie

Just set up sugarsync, I don't think it could have been easier The files I need to back up are only taking up about 1.5gb, the rest I usually backup onto external HD's anyway and other than that, it's just the email which I'm yet to set up, but sugarsync seems brilliant and thanks for the suggestion, you may have saved me from a load of grief were anything to happen the files without a regular back up compared sugarsync to a few others before signing up, backblaze was recommended to me also but sugarsync suits me better, free and not much space needed

cookie1977

Glad I could help. And sure if you needed more space the annual charge is very reasonable. You can also download an app for you mobile to access the files. It's available for a lot of platforms. Very handy when you're out and about.

yoyo

How does Sugarsync compare to Dropbox? I actually had a dropbox and liked it but removed it after the terms of service change privacy concerns. I did try others like Minus & Live Mesh but hated them, liked the Dropbox simplicity, Sugarsync seems to be very similar to Dropbox? Does it create a folder in Windows you can copy files too and they sync?

Cheers

Nick

cormie

Have android so might give that a go alright, could come in handy! The initial upload to Sugarsync is taking a while but I guess this will be much quicker once the files are actually up there and it's just a case of adding the new edited files etc. Do you know, if you shut down the computer in the middle of the upload/sync process, can this cause harm? I've over 3,000 files still to go and not sure how long it will take, can I shut down and it'll continue upon restart?

cookie1977

@cormie. Initial sync will take a while if you've lots of files. After that it'll only sync new/updated files.

@yoyo. I've both dropbox and sugarsync and I prefer sugarsync. The mobile app for sugarsync (blackberry) offers lots more options and is very lean too. I'd imagine the app on other platforms is similar. Dropbox gives 2gb free whereas sugarsync gives 5gbs free. You can sync any folder with sugarsync where as dropbox has a single folder to sync. Try it. I'd say you'll like it.

cormie

Thanks again cookie, the "any folder sync" of sugarsync is a great feature in my opinion, I like to keep things as they are and to have something just working with that in the background is great. Yoyo, sugarsync seems great on first impressions, really simple and straightforward.

Have been looking a bit more into the email backup and there might be a problem with outgoing mail apparently

cormie:
Hi Paul, I'm basically looking into the best way to have all incoming and outgoing mail backed up to a cloud and accessible from anywhere. I have 3 active email accounts with you that I use with Thunderbird email client and also one eircom account that I have set up on Thunderbird too. Can you suggest the best way to go about backing these up in such a way? The eircom account means it probably can't be done via blacknight and from what I know, doing it via gmail is the best option. Can you tell if such a thing is possible, with this type of set up: https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=21288 ? With all previous mail, I can back this up to an external hard drive, unless it's possible to back this up to the same cloud to have all mail accessible?
Paul:
What is it exactly you mean by the cloud?
cormie:
just somewhere online, I hear cloud is the new buzz word
cormie:
I think Gmail is the best solution, so just wondering if what I want is possible with blacknight mail?
Paul:
Gmail would be the best solution. They have nearly unrestricted mailbox size.
Paul:
You could set up Gmail to basically pull the messages of our and Eircom servers following the steps outlined in the link you provided.
cormie:
And do you think it's possible with blacknight mail? I basically want to keep the mail exactly as it is now, but backing up somewhere out there in the vast array of cyberspace, so I won't actually notice it happening, but it'll all be there backed up if anything were to ever compromise my thunderbird set up
Paul:
It really depends on quite a few factors. Is the account in Thunderbird set up as POP or IMAP?
cormie:
pop at the moment, can blacknight mail be imap too? what would you suggest if I need this too?
Paul:
If you use gmail to pull the messages from our servers leaving copy of it on it so your mail client have something to download as well. It will essentially back them up there.
Paul:
However please bear in mind it will only work for incoming messages. The outgoing ones are on your PC only and would need some other solution to be backed up.
cormie:
oh really?
cormie:
can the outgoing mails be done any way similar in the same gmail area?
Paul:
Unfortunately no. That is the downside of POP.
cormie:
hmm, would imap work instead then?
Paul:
Kinda, with IMAP there are other challenges. I would recommend looking into some third party email backup services. Unfortunately those will usually bear a charge however would be the best solution.
cormie:
ok, thanks, I'll have a look into what my options are anyway, would be ideal to just to it all (incoming and outgoing on each account) via gmail and just have that copy backed up and stored on gmail if there was ever an issue where I needed to retrieve mail due to a system compromise

and I saw this on a google help thread:

Popular answer Go to this answer
Some work email accounts (like mine) wouldn't allow auto forward. Neither Gmail can fetch IMAP mails. Now I do this through a complex procedure. Set up work(imap) and Gmail(imap) accounts in Thunderbird. Have a Thunderbird filter copy the incoming work emails to Gmail inbox. So to get a new work email in Gmail, you need to have the Thunderbird up and running. This works very well (no duplication etc), but it is nothing like gmail fetch. I believe there are technical challenges to it, but Google can do it.
6 of 6 people found this answer helpful. Did you?

sounds similar to what you were saying about copying each mail to a special folder. Still not a great solution and would be ideal if gmail could just grab all incoming and outgoing but I'm not sure that's possible?

cookie1977

Other then the "drag and drop" solution I spoke of earlier you could set up a system where every email you send is also sent to your gmail for backup. And if you set up a label on gmail it could be automatically assigned in to a "sent folder" so you know where they are. Make sense?

cormie

That's what I was hoping for alright, but is Paul above not saying that it's not possible with pop to do that?

cookie1977

So if you've gmail imap setup on Thunderbird you can drag and drop any email you like into gmail (pop/imap etc...) Then when you send email BCC a copy of the email to gmail after setting up a label in gmail.

OR

Set up gmail to grab all email from what ever accounts you have and then when you send email BCC a copy of the email to gmail after setting up a label in gmail.

The Black Oil

I've been using Dropbox and Sugarsync. I don't really have a preference for one or the other, though I read something about DB being iffy about names of files, if you've an underscore in them. Don't know if that's true. Re Sugarync, after my computer broke recently, I checked Sugarsync online and my files were there, well, the ones I looked at anyway. Easy to download them again if needs be. The only thing I'll say against it is that sometimes it's a bit iffy and the computer plug-in can act up (usually exit/restart fixes that) and it seems to suggest one or two folders have become disconnected, so that's something to watch out for. Could be something I'm doing wrong, but I generally don't move folders around much on the HD.

Re Google Docs, can you upload full folders to this at once, or do you have to select files one-by-one? I've about 0.6GB of a college folder I'd like to upload, if possible. It's been 3 years since I last used Docs, so I can't recall much about it.

cookie1977

You can upload entire folders to google docs:
http://www.google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html

I have the odd crash with sugarsync but as you say a restart fixes the issue.

cormie

Seems all my files are uploaded now thankfully If there is a crash, will it sync what may not have synced during the crash on the next boot? If so, that's not a big problem at all

cookie1977

Yep. It'll just continue where it left off if there's a crash or you shut down during a sync. Set and forget

The Black Oil

Google Docs prompts to convert the files before uploading, is this necessary if you're not going to be editing within GD itself?

cormie

Hmm, kinda lost here. I've managed to set up a label using the mail fetcher link forcormie@mailacc1, so when I send a mail to that account from my other account, cormie@mailacc2, it shows up in the labelled inbox in gmail, like I guess it's supposed to, so I think that part is completed ok. I just can't get the sent mail anywhere, I tried send a mail from cormie@mailacc1, to bcc; cormie@gmail, and it just came to cormie@gmail as a regular mail and not labelled as cormie@mailacc1. Not sure where to go from here

The Black Oil

Left my computer on last night to upload stuff to Google Docs. Woke up earlier to learn the hard drive had failed. Talk about timing..! Not sure if everything uploaded.

yoyo

Black Oil wrote: »

Left my computer on last night to upload stuff to Google Docs. Woke up earlier to learn the hard drive had failed. Talk about timing..! Not sure if everything uploaded.

Fingers crossed it was, very bad time for a hard disk to fail also due to the prices of drives have gone thru the roof due to the Thailand flooding situation. Did the iMac you had trouble with get fixed yet?

Nick

cookie1977

cormie wrote: »

Hmm, kinda lost here. I've managed to set up a label using the mail fetcher link forcormie@mailacc1, so when I send a mail to that account from my other account, cormie@mailacc2, it shows up in the labelled inbox in gmail, like I guess it's supposed to, so I think that part is completed ok. I just can't get the sent mail anywhere, I tried send a mail from cormie@mailacc1, to bcc; cormie@gmail, and it just came to cormie@gmail as a regular mail and not labelled as cormie@mailacc1. Not sure where to go from here

Try this:
http://www.naffziger.net/blog/fix-its-how-tos-info/filter-gmail-messages-on-bcc-field/

or this:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=53e9a4fd4705a12c&hl=en

Black Oil wrote: »

Left my computer on last night to upload stuff to Google Docs. Woke up earlier to learn the hard drive had failed. Talk about timing..! Not sure if everything uploaded.

Ooh not good. Worst case scenario and if it's worth it you could pay for it to be recovered. Try not to use the hard drive any more though.

The Black Oil

Yeah, I got the iMac back...am posting from it now.

The backup I was creating last night was a secondary online one (a little headwrecking to keep everything in sync in more than one place, but hey), so I didn't lose my college stuff...the laptop needs a new HD.

cormie

It took me a while, but I think I managed to set it up properly as is explained in the second link, I couldn't understand the first link jargon at all

With it set up now, I still don't think it's going to be a viable backup, say if I'm sending a mail from cormie@mail1 to cookie@gmail and bcc cormie@gmail, when I check the cormie@mail1 label, the mail that's sent is just showing up as cormie@mail1, instead of cookie@gmail, if I'll ever be searching, I'll be searching for cookie and not for myself I'm sure.

Also, having to manually add a bcc to every email would be a huge commitment I wonder is there an auto bcc filler add on for thunderbird at all. Had a quick look but it doesn't seem so.


EDIT: seems cookie@gmail may not be showing up... weird, it wasn't initially..

also, any idea how to search through all the mails in the label?

cormie

edit: nope, new mails don't appear to be showing tested sending to cormie@mail3 and cormie@mail3 doesn't show up anywhere in the cormie@mail1 filter

cormie@mail3 does show up in the to section when you click into the mail however, but I can't see anywhere to search for this?

EDIT: Ahh, I missed the big search box right above it with a prefix of label:cormie@mail1, so if you search label:cormie@mail1 cormie@mail3, then it comes up

this could work so! I just need to find a way to auto bcc now because I just can't imagine manually doing it every single email!

cormie

Deep breath!! Found solution to auto BCC, brilliant

To automatically send a Bcc: copy of all mail to one or more email addresses in Mozilla Thunderbird:

Select Tools | Account Settings... from the menu in Mozilla Thunderbird.
Go to Copies & Folders under the desired account.
Make sure Bcc these email addresses: is checked.
Type the desired address or addresses.
Select multiple addresses by comma.
Click OK.

When you compose a new message in Mozilla Thunderbird, the automatic Bcc: addresses have already been entered. If desired, you can selectively remove them, of course.

Now... I think I'll need to give it a little test with general usage and come back and see how it fares, but I think this may be the solution I was looking for, maybe a little messy but seems to be a solution!

cormie

Damn, I think setting up that filter may have stopped INCOMING mail now showing up in the cormie@mail1 filter! Anything stand out that could be the problem?


EDIT: ah, got it I think, just had to "check mail" from the fetching because it doesn't do it often in gmail and it had only checked it 47 minutes ago, then when I "checked mail" I got the ones I was missing

cookie1977

Give it a few days and let us know how it goes.

cormie

Thanks again

Ok, seems to be functioning ok, the only thing I can't figure out is how to stop the pop mails being forwarded to another mail address.

Basically I have cormie@gmail set up to forward mails to cormie@mail1, after having set up cormie@mail2 to fetch incoming and filtered to fetch incoming bcc to gmail, I'm actually getting a copy of both the incoming and bcc'd mail in the cormie@mail1 inbox on thunderbird.

I initially set up cormie@gmail just to forward to cormie@mail1 for my actual GMAIL intended mails as I don't use the gmail address other than for android, docs, backing up etc.

I have the filter you linked to set up and haven't checked the "forward to" box, so not sure what I'm missing..

cormie

This is becoming a lot more complicated...
I sorted the issue with the forwarding, I had disable global forwarding, then set up another filter and add the cormie@mail2 address as a "minus -" address in the to and from field of the filter, and this sorted the issue.

So now it works as I want, if cookie@mail sends a mail to cormie@gmail, it will be archived and marked as read in gmail and I'll get a copy showing "from cookie" and to "cormie@gmail", in my cormie@mail1 thunderbird inbox.

Now if cookie@mail sends a mail to cormie@mail2 (fetched mail), that will go to the cormie@mail2 label and is filtered NOT to forward to cormie@mail1. Same applies to me reply from cormie@mail2 to cookie, it just gets stored in gmail and not forwarded as it's meant to.

Problems and bugs:

• Even though I have set the filter to mark the fetched cormie@mail2 messages as "read", they are still arriving unread. I don't think this happened before I changed things, I'm not sure what I changed to cause them to stop being marked as read, but this is a minor problem so I can live with it if it'll be a fixed bug some day.
  
• If I send a mail from cormie@mail3 to cormie@mail2 AND cormie@gmail (so both addresses in the same mail window), this seems to mess up and disable the whole thing. I get the mail as expected in the cormie@mail2 thunderbird inbox, but I don't get it in gmail, at all! Then, the mail to cormie@gmail seems to bypass the filters too. Doesn't get forwarded to cormie@mail1 and does't get archived/marked as read etc in Gmail. It's as if I never set up any filters at all.

These are both minor as it's unlikely anyone will ever send a mail to both address simultaneously, but it would be nice if these bugs could be solved..

cormie

I've written out a much more simplified version of the events described here in the Google support forum to hopefully get the required to solve the bugs

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=37e31f8c22bf6549&hl=en

cormie

So somebody has posted a reply to the Google help question but I'm nearly even more confused now with that reply then I was before I started all this, he says it will fix the bugs but I'm not sure it'll give the same results as I have and I'm afraid to go messing with things

cormie

Strange, on starting my computer, I think the last two times, a pop up has come up saying sugarsync has encountered an error and must close or something to that effect, the only option is "close program" but it seems not to close and it now says "all files are backed up and in sync" when I mouse over the tray icon

Is that similar to the crashing errors that were being talked of earlier I wonder?

cookie1977

Check to make sure you're running the latest release. Sometimes I experience crashes when I have then loose wifi signal.
1.9.42 seems to be the latest release:
https://www.sugarsync.com/downloads/SugarSyncSetup.exe

cormie

Thanks again, seems the problem went away without me even upgrading.

My friend told me of Skydrive from microsoft, is it a sugarsync competitor? 25gb free apparently...

The Black Oil

yoyo wrote: »

How does Sugarsync compare to Dropbox? I actually had a dropbox and liked it but removed it after the terms of service change privacy concerns. I did try others like Minus & Live Mesh but hated them, liked the Dropbox simplicity, Sugarsync seems to be very similar to Dropbox? Does it create a folder in Windows you can copy files too and they sync?

Cheers

Nick

What privacy concerns did you have? A friend of mine said DB is more sure than Sugarsync...I don't know.

yoyo

Black Oil wrote: »

What privacy concerns did you have? A friend of mine said DB is more sure than Sugarsync...I don't know.

Theres was a clause which said Dropbox could own any files/content you upload and use it if they want, or something like that. I think they updated their terms again, correcting the issue but I had college thesis & stuff on it so wasn't comfortable leaving it up so deleted the account, you can read more on it here

Nick