Everything you need to know about email backups

Whether you're considering transferring your hosting service to us, or just concerned about security or compliance, it's important to know how to back up your emails.

Before you can make an effective plan, you'll need to understand a few important points about email hosting. This guide will take you step by step through the process of identifying how your email accounts are set up, creating your first local backup, configuring your mail client (email program) to use the best settings for your needs, and setting up secure encrypted cloud backups.

By the end of this guide, you will know:

• The most important aspect of managing your mail: Understanding the difference between POP3 and IMAP, the two options for how your mail is set up.
• What a mail client is, and which version of which mail client you're using
• Where your emails are stored on your device
• What a 3-2-1 backup strategy is
• How to set up your mail client
• How to safely and securely backup up your email for:
  • transfers
  • safety, disaster recovery, and compliance

To make this guide as useful as possible, you can use the table of contents below to skip to the parts that apply to you. The essential steps are:

1. Understand the difference between POP3 and IMAP
2. Determine which mail client(s) you're using
3. Perform a complete and safe local backup of your mailbox
4. Adjust your mail client settings so that you're using the right settings for your needs
5. Create and implement a regular backup schedule

Scenarios

Scenario: Transferring a domain to a new provider

Esti is her family's go-to IT technician. Her parents want to move their domain and hosting to Imaginet. Esti knows that it's important to back up all emails before initiating the transfer, but she's not sure how to ensure that no emails are lost during the transfer process.

Solution: Esti should: Indentify the mail clients her parents are using Follow the steps below to create local backups of her parents' mailboxes Back up her parents' website and send the backup to Imaginet to be uploaded Initiate the domain transfer Set up her parents' mailboxes as POP3 accounts, with a suitable time delay before deleting emails from the server

Scenario: Disaster recovery

Luthando owns a small business. He already backs up his emails on his PC, as well as on an external hard drive which he stores safely at home, not at his business premises. However, Luthando has been worried about the increasing rates of floods and fires in his area. He fears that if something bad should happen, he may lose access to his data.

Solution: Luthando needs Stratus Cloud Backup. He should also set up a schedule for: updating the backup on his hard drive practising a recovery scenario, in which he goes through the steps of recovering his data as if a disaster had occurred testing his backed up data for integrity and completeness

POP3 vs IMAP

Understanding the differences between POP3 and IMAP is the most important step toward taking control of your mail and performing a complete and safe backup.

The most important differences between POP3 and IMAP

POP3	IMAP
Emails are downloaded. This means that each email message exists in full as a set of files on your device. The email message itself, and all attachments, signatures, etc, usually exist as separate files on your device. However some mail clients, notably Microsoft Outlook, might handle your email files differently.	Emails are synced. This means that The files making up each email (the message itself, and all attachments, signatures, etc.) are stored on the server, and your mail client may or may not keep these files on your device as well. When you sync your mail, your mail client fetches only the headers of the mail on the server and displays these to you as a list of the emails in your mailbox. The content of an email is usually only downloaded to your device when you click an email to read it, however you can change this behaviour with a setting in your mail client.
Downloaded emails can be left on the server or removed from the server, and this behaviour is controlled by a setting in your mail client. You can set your mail client to never delete mail from the server delete email from the server as soon as you download it delete mail from the server after a certain number of days delete email from the server when you delete it from your mail client	Emails are left on the server at least until you delete them from your mail client. When you delete an email, the settings in your mail client will determine what happens to that mail on the server: The email could be deleted from the server right away The email could be moved to the Deleted items or Trash folder, which: can be set to empty when you close your mail client can be set to empty periodically every few days can be set to never empty automatically. This can lead to unexpected storage usage
Sent mail is not stored on the server.	Sent mail may or may not be stored on the server.
If you've sorted your email into folders, these folders exist on your device, not on the server.	Your custom folders exist on your device, and may or may not exist on the server.

Your emails are stored in your mail client as a database or a collection of files. Different mail clients and different versions of each mail client might store mail differently.

Mail clients

A mail client is the program you use to send and receive emails.

The most popular choices are Microsoft's Outlook, and Mozilla's Thunderbird.

Account settings are very similar in all mail clients, but the exact phrasing or name of each setting might differ between different programs, or between different versions of the same program.

Check your mail client version

The first step in backing up your emails is determining which version of which mail client you're using.

Outlook

Take a look at Which version of Outlook am I using to determine which Version of Outlook you're using.

Thunderbird

Click the main menu button, then go to the Help menu and choose Troubleshooting Information. In the new tab that opens, look for the version number under Application Basics.

Apple Mail

Open the Mail app, and click the Mail menu. Choose About Mail to see the version you're using.

Check whether your mail client is set up to use POP3 or IMAP

To find out which you're using, you'll need to check your email account settings. If you're not sure how to do this, click the name of your mail client below for instructions:

• Outlook
• Thunderbird
• Apple mail on MacOS

The backup process

The process for backing up your emails depends on your mail client, and what you want to achieve.

For all mail clients

If you want to transfer your domain and hosting

Your emails can not be transferred automatically, and we therefore recommend backing up your mail before the transfer begins. If you've been using POP3 to receive your mail, you already have local copies of your messages, but it's still a good idea to make a backup. If you've been using IMAP, we've written a guides on creating local email backups with various mail clients. Once you've backed up your emails and website, you're ready to begin the transfer process, and our helpdesk agents and customer service team are ready to assist you during every step of the process.

If you want backups for disaster recovery

• Choose up a Stratus Cloud Backup service
• Contact Imaginet and inform us of the package you've chosen.
• Our helpdesk agents will guide you through the process of setting up your Stratus Backup service.
• Configure the backup program to back up your PST file according to a schedule that suits you.
• See the following section for tips for creating a disaster recovery plan.

If you want encrypted backups for POPIA compliance

• Choose up a Stratus Cloud Backup service
• Contact Imaginet and inform us of the package you've chosen.
• Our helpdesk agents will guide you through the process of setting up your Stratus Backup service.
• Create a strong password for your encrypted backup. Your emails will be backed up and the data in the cloud will be encrypted with POPIA-compliant AES encryption.
• Configure the backup program to back up your data according to a schedule that suits you.

If you're using Outlook

We do not recommend using Outlook. The data files it uses to store your emails (PST and OST files) are incredibly prone to corruption and data loss. This is so common, in fact, that Microsoft provides special software for "fixing common problems". Your valuable data should not be susceptible to so many "common problems" that you need special tools. If you do need to use Outlook though, we've got your back. Take a look at the info below for guidance specific to Outlook.

If you want to transfer your domain and hosting

For IMAP accounts

• Configure Outlook to download complete messages
• Create a new PST file by following the steps below.
• Copy and paste your emails and/or folders from your current inbox to the new PST folder in Outlook.
• Back up your website and send the backup to Imaginet for upload.
• Transfer your domain.
• Set up new POP3 email accounts in Outlook using the settings provided by Imaginet.
• Configure your mail client to delete email from the server after a suitable amount of time.

For POP3 accounts

• Export your PST File by following the steps below.
• Back up your website and send the backup to Imaginet for upload.
• Transfer your domain.
• When the transfer is complete, simply change your email account settings to those provided by Imaginet.
• Configure your mail client to delete email from the server after a suitable amount of time.

Creating your first local backup

Click the relevant option for instructions:

Backing up your emails in Outlook

Backing up your emails in Thunderbird

Backing up your mails in Apple Mail

How to back up your emails if you only use webmail

Developing a 3-2-1 backup plan

The gold standard for data protection and disaster recovery, the 3-2-1 plan simply means that you should:

• Have 3 copies of all your important data -- the main version you work with, and 2 backups.
• Use 2 different types of storage for your backups. For example, a cloud backup, and an external drive or flash stick.
• Keep 1 backup off-site, preferably in the cloud.

Backup storage

It's worth considering the type of storage you use for your backups. While cloud backups are relatively immune to data loss, physical media like hard drives, solid state storage (SSDs USB flash media, SD cards, etc.), and optical media (CDs, DVDs, Blu Ray, etc) can be vulnerable to various types of corruption, even when not being used. Physical disruption of the physical "bits" (the units that store the actual 0s and 1s of digital data) leads to corruption, and storage media can slowly lose data with time, even when they're stored safely and not used often. This is known as bit rot.

• Optical discs are prone to disc rot as they age, and the reflective layer and pigments undergo chemical degradation. This makes optical discs unsuitable for backup and archival purposes. If you choose to back up any data on optical media, it's important to replace the discs often.

• Flash and other solid state uses electrical charge to store bits in very small components which can wear out with time. Different types of flash components are also susceptible to gradual loss of charge, and these problems become more pronounced with larger volume drives which use ever smaller physical bits. It's therefore important that you check your storage devices at least once a year.

• Mechanic hard drives store data in magnetic domains on physical disc platters, which are prone to physical damage. Being bumped or dropped, being in use during a power failure, or being exposed to very strong magnetic fields can all result in data loss. Physical hard drives should be stored in static-free padded containers, and checked for consistency often.

• All storage media are susceptible to data loss due to exposure to high temperatures or high humidity. Your choice of where to store your physical drives is therefore very important. Always store your backup devices in a cool, dry place, preferably in a sealed padded container with some desiccant like silica gel (silica cat litter is a good choice since it's cheap and easy to find).

Scheduling regular backups

Windows

1. Create a System recovery drive to restore your Windows system.
2. [cloud backups in your Stratus backup software]
3. Manually copy your important files to an external storage device.

Linux and Unix-like

1. Use a utility like Timeshift to create and schedule system snapshots.
2. Schedule cloud backups in your Stratus backup software. Clients are available for Debian-based distros, as well as RHEL, CentOS, and FreeBSD.
3. Utilities like Borgbackup or Déjà Dup can be used to back up user files, or you can create a cron job to run a script to back up your files.

Testing and maintaining your backup data

So you've done the responsible thing and backed up your data to the cloud, and made a second backup on a physical device. What now? It's a good idea to test your backup devices periodically.

• Windows CHKDSK can be used to test the file systems your storage media, and the PowerShell module PsFCIV can be used to compute and check file hashes to verify integrity.
• On Linux systems, fsck can be used to test your storage media, and utilities like md5sum can generate hashes which can be saved to a file, which you can check later using the --check option.

While MD5 hashes are not secure they are fast, and are suitable for simple integrity tests.

Encrypting your backups

Stratus cloud backup can automatically encrypt your backed up data with strong AES encryption. Simply set a strong password password when you set up your backups.

Remember: The point of encryption is that it can't be cracked, so there is no way to recover your data if you forget your password.

If you want to encrypt your local backups as well, for peace of mind, or POPIA compliance, there are free tools available.

• On Windows, you can use BitLocker, which is easy to enable for external and internal storage devices.

• On Linux, LUKS and VeraCrypt are popular choices for full disk encryption.