Transferring archived emails to new pc
We have recently purchased a new work pc and installed Thunderbird successfully. It happily shows our current emails inboxes and the contents. However it is vital that I can still access old emails that have been archived on the old pc 'locally'. I have these saved in year folders, 2022, 2023 etc. The sheer size of these archives is causing me a headache, as I cannot see how to move them easily; 2023 alone is nearly 5GB! To give it some context, we are an engraving company and as part of the process we send and receive artwork files, hence the size of the folder. Customers return to us year on year and expect us to be able to recall what they used previously, or remember an email conversation of previous years. The minimum I need to keep is the 2023 email, but 2022 would be useful too. I have tried looking on Youtube, but all the videos there seem to be about moving the the 'live' emails rather than those than the archived folders saved on the pc. Any help on how to achieve this would be appreciated please.
כל התגובות (5)
How did you move your profile to new PC? My first thought would be that the archives were part of the profile and would have transferred as well.
Hi David, thanks for responding. My son transferred it over and is not available to help with this part. I'm not sure how he did it. My understanding is that as the archives are saved locally on the hard drive of my old pc, they are not transferred automatically.
If the old PC is available, I suggest verifying that the archives are not within the profile as, if they are, copying the full profile is the easier solution.
Thank you David, I will take a look and update you once I have managed it. The archives folder is 29GB total, so first thing is to buy myself a portable hard drive big enough to handle it.
ClassyGlass said
Thank you David, I will take a look and update you once I have managed it. The archives folder is 29GB total, so first thing is to buy myself a portable hard drive big enough to handle it.
It certainly is. 100Gb usb drives are relatively cheap. Ebay lists ones of a1Tb for under $50 so perhaps buy two or more. If this data is important to you and your company you need to not only transfer it, but also back it up. Good backup procedures are sadly lacking in small business and are a leading cause of issues post a natural disaster like a flood or cyclone. (yep I am in the southern hemisphere)
While you are making your archive copy to move, make a second and take it home, or better yet place it with someone out of state. Best is do both things. Then repeat the process at a frequency you can tolerate, but no so infrequent you loose invaluable data in a disaster situation. I recall the issues some professional acquaintances had post Katrina in the USA because they had backups, but they were just as wet as the originals because their offsite backups were on the same floodplain as the business.
Many these days rely on "the cloud" but that only works if the physical box the data is stored on is not also in the disaster area. It is unfortunately rare that anyone using cloud storage actually knows where "the cloud" is in respect to their data.
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