Backup, change data path and restore

1

Hi folks,
i see many questions about backups, restore and other problems here and there.
For my curiosity i’ve done a test with v.8.0.2703.0, for example, how to change emc data path at no risk (with data and accounts) and bringing back all the stuff to work again in a different folder as follows:
1 i did a backup, data test with 2 accounts, 1gb zip more or less.
2 changed the data path from the main menu (after this, quit emc and restart, emc asks a new account as a new fresh installation with no data at all)
3 restored the last backup made few minutes before.
4 everything is back at work as a charm, apart what follows:
– my pop account on microsoft live re-download all the messages (yes, the new and all the old ones), it seems emc lost flagged msgs downloaded, re-downloading all the stuff again
– custom theme not saved with the backup, thanks god i had a backup of a theme
Just for your info
Mic

For Emc programmers:For godness sake, is so difficult to show a msgbox with text as “hey dude, wait please, i’m doing the backup for you” while emc is backing up and zipping the data (can take a long time with more data).
The actual spinning wheel is sometimes small and invisible, happens you think emc is idle but is working in the background.

2

Yes that will happen with POP3 accounts when you change the data path. There is a Deduplicator, maybe designed for that exact issue - who knows?

Unfortunately the backup does not include the folder where custom themes are saved. Weird, but an old gripe.

This is displayed in the Operations window during the backup.

3

To Gary, many thanks for your words.
Just for a better clarification:

  • pop3 re-download happens just with microsoft live stuff or every kind of pop3 account ? (i use fastmail my main work account)
  • custom themes not saved, not so serious problem, hence i will survive backing up themes.
  • “deduplicator” never used yet but sounds good, i’ll test it asap to see how it works.

Mic

4

My experience with POP3 is that this is a universal trait regardless of provider. After a restore, it would seem to lose the download history and just do everything again. Maybe it is a bug with eM Client, but I am not sure. I never opened a support ticket for that either.

Custom themes are saved in a Themes sub-directory of your database directory, unless you have specified a different location in your Theme settings. Maybe you could change that to your Documents folder, then it could be backed up along with those files. You do backup your documents, right?

5

Ok Gary, so let’s stay in “limbo” with this pop3 experience, anyway “deduplicator” could help us to remove doubled mgsg (i’ll try it in these days).
Custom themes will be managed as you suggest.
Backup, yessss of course, every three days, keep always the last two ones :ok_hand:
better safe…

6

Hi again Gary,
“deduplicator” seems to work as a charm; following his requests step by step i was able to move to trash the duplicates msgs. (deduplicator trashes the old ones, marked “read” and let stay in the folder the new-downloaded-again ones, correctly marked “unread” but this can be resolved quickly).
The number of trashed msgs was exaclty the same as the newly downloaded, so i assume “deduplicator” works as you explained before.
But i’ll check if the trashed msgs are effectively the ones to be trashed or, there are some caught by error.
Stay tuned
Mic

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