How Do You Store and Reconcile Email Archives?

heyitsjustme wants to know how you deal with old email. "I delete most of what I get but keep the stuff from friends and relations as an archive. Unfortunately I have these email archives from the late 80's through today in the form of macintosh, linux and windows mailboxes including AOL 1.0 mailboxes. What does everyone use to archive email across multiple platforms and non-standard mailbox formats? Is there an easy solution out there? Does anyone archive IM?"

Italian school of driving

[goombah99]

No need for rear view mirrors. What is behind you is not important.

Here's what I do...

[sub7]

I archive all my pr0n on DVDs these days. It's really easy and oh wait... fsck!

rm -fR /var/spool/mail/*

[xlyz]

and you are done!

I work for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

...so I just delete everything after a major deal falls through.

email archive

[Pompatus]

I delete most of what I get

You must work for microsoft

Simple..

[billimad]

I give mine to Microsoft for the safe storage and instant retreval they are renoud for. Oh wait..

One's things sure

[eddeye]

Don't ask Microsoft [slashdot.org].

Re:Here's what I do...

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

I archive all my pr0n on DVDs these days. It's really easy and oh wait... fsck!

One day... someone... somewhere is going to invent some sort of mechanism for removing text you've already typed. It shall be called "back-one-space" and will remove the letter before it.

If this is impossible, surely they can keep a way of having all our text auto-submitted!

Re:Log everything...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I log and keep all my traffic including IRC logs going back to '94.

Hey B5_geek, here's a trick to free up a lot of disk space *and* raise the S/N ratio in your logs:

mv irclog.txt irclog.txt.fat && grep -vi lol irclog.txt.fat > irclog.txt && rm -f irclog.txt.fat

Re:Archive what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you throw out your mail as soon as you read it, how are you keeping letters written by deceased relatives? Are they sending you mail after they die?

Re:Archive what?

[Lorrin]

I'd imagine once your relatives decease they stop sending you mail -- conveniently cutting down on the amount you need to archive. Nice!

Re:Here's what I do...

[sulli]

You probably don't need to check DVD file systems if you've burned them properly.

American school of driving

[Anonymous Coward]

My car is bigger than yours. Move it or lose it!

Dave's top ten

[FreeLinux]

10 Your mother told you to stop being such a pack rat.
9. Disks fill up, no matter how cheap they are. Low cost doesn't excuse gluttony.
8. Backups take forever.
7. Restores take an eternity, especially if your not confident.
6. Mail client gets slower and slower.
5. Searches take too long.
4. Mail clients make mistakes, especially on big stores. See #7
3. Your CYA evidence may be used against you.
2. A mail store is not a file system and SMTP is not a file transfer protocol.

And the number one reason to delete your old email...

1. IT'S ALL A BUNCH OF USELESS CRAP JUST AS IT WAS WHEN YOU FIRST RECEIVED IT!!

Re:One word

[Anonymous Coward]

6GB yearly? Holy shit...

Do you actually sign up to those free porn places?

My solution

[anon*127.0.0.1]

I've found the easiest way to handle EMail when it's in multiple formats like that is to just print everything out and store it in boxes in my garage.

Re:Insightful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and iTunes turns raw sewage into fresh daisys. Shut up, fanboy.

Post it on /.

[pyrrhonist]

Just post all your email on Slashdot. Since no one reads the articles anyway, no one will notice when they aren't on topic, and there's always the possibility that your email from Mom will actually be on topic. Furthermore, it will be easy to search using Google, and the Wayback Machine will automatically archive everything for you.

As a bonus, you can tell which emails are worth reading by how they get moderated. All your work related emails will probably be modded Troll, except for your performance review, which will be modded +5 Funny. Email from your illicit lovers will be modded Insightful, since that type of thing is new to most of us. Email from your family will be conveniently modded down so you will not have to deal with it. Your friends won't need to send you any email at all, since they are probably already on Slashdot, and therefore, know enough to post in your threads.

Problem solved. Ah, Slashdot... Is there anything it can't do?

Re:Since a month back

[FLEB]

There are traps.

Re:Dave's top ten

[nick_davison]

1. IT'S ALL A BUNCH OF USELESS CRAP JUST AS IT WAS WHEN YOU FIRST RECEIVED IT!!

Hey! It has nostalgia value. I love being able to reminisce about the old Enlarge Your Penis offers I used to get back in the days when I could still look down and see it - damn programmer's gut.

Uh... I mean... I hear that's what others use it for.

Does anyone archive IM?

[AsYouKnow Bob]

You mean, besides the NSA?