Will Backing Up My Computer Back Up My Email?

❓ In order to figure out how to back up your email you first have to figure out where it lives. It might be on your computer; it might be out on the internet.

❓ Backing up your computer, backing up your email
To back up your email using a Windows computer backup, it depends on where, exactly, your email is stored. If using a desktop email program like Thunderbird, emails are downloaded to your computer and included in an image backup. For other backups, make sure the backup includes the folders where email is stored. If you access email using a web browser, that email is stored online, not on your computer. Use a mail program to download emails to your computer to include them in your backup.

Chapters
0:00 Back Up Email
0:55 Image backups
1:10 Email stored on your computer
1:50 Email in a web browser

More Ask Leo!

#askleo #backup #email

[NoEggu]

@1:19 "How do you know if your e-mail is stored on your computer?"
Disconnect your computer from your router / cable modem (disconnect your computer from the internet). Then, try to access your e-mail messages.

Whatever e-mail messages you can access, while disconnected from the internet, will be ones that are stored on your computer.

[msun]

Maybe worth mentioning that if you restore deleted email from a backup via a desktop client with IMAP, perhaps disconnect from the internet to avoid the risk of losing that recovered email through synchronisation.

[grahampalmer]

I thought perhaps giving a prompt for viewers to check or double check their backup settings, and where to see these, might have been useful.

[DavidM]

Such an important topic. I normally do not backup my entire PC routinely. I have a couple of ways of backing up only my data to my NAS every day but backup the entire PC less frequently. And this means needing to know where your email is store on your computer ( assuming that's where it is.) I normally use Microsoft Outlook desktop version and have tested Thunderbird. In one or both cases ( I've long forgotten which ) it doesn't store the email in the Documents folder; it is stored in the Appdata folder. So, if you backup only your Documents folder, you're likely not backing up your email. I moved all of my email storage to my general data storage folder by re-configuring my email apps; the process can be a bit challenging. Also, be careful that you are backing up your contacts / address book because that is stored in a separate file. I will often back those up using the apps' internal backup function.

And speaking of backing up Leo, a worthwhile video to make would be on backing up various device configuration files. For example, I backup the config files for my various bits of network hardware that most of us have - routers, Network Attached Storage devices (NAS), etc. Also, many apps allow you to backup your configurations. For example, how many of us change the layout of our email programs, Excel, Word, etc. Those layouts can usually be backed up separately. Doing this has saved my bacon on far too many occasions. I back this up often. So often that I wish most devices and apps would allow us to schedule regular config backups.

[Vicvines]

I'm thinking of doing this today and then backing THAT up to my Synology.

[francosilvestri]

Thanks for the very informative video Leo! I have a question not directly connected with this video: what is better:
1) to clone multiple operating systems to the same external HDD where I have backups of my documents (one separate partition for each OS and another separate partition for my backup)?
2) Or is it better to clone my operating systems (I have 4 of them) to one HDD for each OS,
3) or last option, to backup my documents to HDD #1 and to clone my OSes in one HDD #2 with as many partitions as OSes ?
And if so, why?

[OlettaLiano]

So, some people actually get emails? I wonder what that's like.