Online Backup of .pst

[Tesla]

Hi guys,

What's the easiest and quickest way for a customer to keep a regular backup of his email which is received via a pop account.

His Outlook 2007 .pst is ever growing in size. Daily online backup would want to backup the entire .pst file(s) everyday taking quite a while.

I have considered switching his use to IMAP but he has a lot of mail folders stored locally.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Simmy]

Have you considered a googlemail account retrieving emails from his pop3 account? If you tell google and his email client to leave a copy of the message on the server, it's not a bad way of backin up all incoming emails. It won't save outgoing emails mind, but he could send a cc copy to his googlemail account.

Just realised that doesnt' really help you backup current emails in the PST file

 

[iptech]

Have a look at MailStore Home It has many benefits over the clunky Outlook archive feature but the single-user edition is only free for private use.

 

[DavidF]

I've been using GFI Backup a lot for file syncing. It works well for a local backup to external HDD or local mapped drive. The setup is a breeze as is the config.
Might require a .bat file to close outlook prior to the file sync or training the EU to close Outlook at the end of the day.
Read EULA etc.

 

[Elemdee]

Have a look at MailStore Home It has many benefits over the clunky Outlook archive feature and the single-user edition is free for private and business users.

I like the looks of that, I'm going to try that out for myself. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Alan22]

From Microsoft:
Outlook 2007/2003/2002 Add-in: Personal Folders Backup

Overview
Backing up your Microsoft Outlook information is quicker and easier with the Personal Folders Backup feature. Personal Folders Backup creates backup copies of your .PST files at regular intervals, in Outlook 2002 and later versions, making it easy to keep all of your Outlook folders safely backed up.

With Personal Folders Backup, you can choose which of your .PST files you wish to back up, and how often you wish to back them up.

Each .PST file contains all of your Outlook folders, including the Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts. You can have a single .PST file (usually called "Internet Folders" or "Personal Folders" in your Folder List), but you might also have an additional .PST file that you use for archiving ("Archiving Folders"). Personal Folders Backup lets you back up any or all of these .PST files.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Have a look at MailStore Home It has many benefits over the clunky Outlook archive feature and the single-user edition is free for private and business users.

Not according to their license agreement...

(5) The use of Freeware is restricted to use for private purposes only. Any kind of use of the Freeware whatsoever for commercial purposes shall not be permitted; this shall in particular apply to use of Freeware for purposes of archiving business email correspondence. Archiving of pool accounts or e-mail accounts not tied to a specific person shall explicitly be prohibited.

 

[Majestic]

Ever considering using Carbonite?

It'll backup everything and it's $50 a year for an unlimited mirror.

Majestic

 

[iptech]

Not according to their license agreement...

My bad. I must admit I first tried when in was in Beta a few years back, almost certain this wasn't a restriction then.

Still a good program to recommend for non-business clients though.

Edit: Original post amended

 

[ProTech-MN]

Why not just use the built-in Auto Archive function within Outlook to archive his older data and help keep the size of his main PST file in check (Don't forget to periodically compact the PST file too!). Then just back it up each night like you would normally.

Keep in mind, as PST files increase in size, the chance of corruption increases as well. While Outlook 2007's recommended max size is something on the order of 20GB, I typically try to keep PST files < 3-4GB or ideally even below 2GB if possible.

-Randy

 

[myPCTechs]

I second Carbonite?

If all you're doing is backing up a PST file it's golden. If you're going to eventually want to do the entire computer, a better solution is Acronis to USB.

 

[Joines]

Once the .PST file gets big enough its going to become problematic. Not just for backing it up but also Outlook being able to handle it

One of our clients has 3 editiors who constantly recieve pdf's, docs, images, huge files that they litteraly store within their PST files. What we did for them is we created a new blank PST file, then replicated their old folder structure. After we had their exact folder structure and their email rules/etc setup we renamed that pst file something like Outlook.PSTclean.

After this we trained their on-site IT person to just rename their current Outlook.pst to something like Outlook3-6-2010.pst when it reaches 1GB then copy the Outlook.PSTclean and rename it to Outlook.pst. If the editors ever need a file from back in march or before they can just open that data file momentarily, and then close it when they are done.

We originally had them setup to archive, but when an archive.pst reaches 16GB, it tends to not be happy either.