dovecot - Aug 2015 - backing up email / saving maildir on external hard drives

Dear Christian,
Thanks for your feedback.
The HDD will not accept larger than 4GB (as its in FAT format). Its a new
external HDD. Thinking of the best format(that would work with Mac , Win
and Linux) .seems like a challenge.
What's your view on NTFS? And why not exFAT?

Thanks
Kevin

On Saturday, August 8, 2015, Christian Kivalo <ml+dovecot at valo.at>
wrote:
>
>
> Am 08. August 2015 06:56:55 MESZ, schrieb Kevin Laurie <
> superinterstellar at gmail.com <javascript:;>>:
> >Hello,
> >Yesterday I tried to back up a 40GB maildir .
> >I tried to move the maildir from home to external HDD but failed.
> >Decided
> >then to compress it(which took several hours). Now changing the disk
> >format
> >from FAT to exFAT to allow the transfer for the large compressed file.
> >
> >How does one back up emails on a external drive?
> >Some advice would be greatly appreciated.
>
> i backup my maildir with rsync to my home nas.
>
> i assume you are using linux or similar, so when backing up to an external
> hdd i'd also use rsync to copy over the maildir as is to the external
hdd
> but use a different filesystem n that hdd like ext4 or xfs or anything else
> than fat/vfat/exfat.
>
> when something goes wrong you can just copy the files back.
>
> what was the error message you got when you tried to copy to the ext. hdd?
>
> regards
> - c
>

Am Samstag, den 08.08.2015, 21:45 +0530 schrieb Kevin
Laurie:
> Dear Christian,
> Thanks for your feedback.
> The HDD will not accept larger than 4GB (as its in FAT format). Its a 
> new
> external HDD. Thinking of the best format(that would work with Mac , 
> Win
> and Linux) .seems like a challenge.
> What's your view on NTFS? And why not exFAT?
> 
> Thanks
> Kevin
> 
Hi Kevin,

you can have multiple partitions even on an external HDD.
Or do you really need one big partition which works on all 3 OS?

For Win and OS X I'd use exFAT.
OS X AFAIK doestn't have write support on NTFS enabled by default.
And then for Linux a native FS like ext4,btrfs,XFS or whatever you
personally prefer.

Though the best would be indeed 3 partitions for each OS.
NTFS for Windows
And then HFS+ for OS X

For example I use on my backup HDD NTFS for Windows and btrfs for my
Linux Systems

Hi Felix,

I would prefer having one HDD that works with all three OSes. That
would be very convenient.
Guess exFAT is my best bet. Its supported on Linux,Win and OS X.
What do you reckon?
Best Regards
Kevin

On Sun, Aug 9, 2015 at 2:46 PM, Felix Zielcke <fzielcke at z-51.de>
wrote:
> Am Samstag, den 08.08.2015, 21:45 +0530 schrieb Kevin Laurie:
>> Dear Christian,
>> Thanks for your feedback.
>> The HDD will not accept larger than 4GB (as its in FAT format). Its a
>> new
>> external HDD. Thinking of the best format(that would work with Mac ,
>> Win
>> and Linux) .seems like a challenge.
>> What's your view on NTFS? And why not exFAT?
>>
>> Thanks
>> Kevin
>>
>
> Hi Kevin,
>
> you can have multiple partitions even on an external HDD.
> Or do you really need one big partition which works on all 3 OS?
>
> For Win and OS X I'd use exFAT.
> OS X AFAIK doestn't have write support on NTFS enabled by default.
> And then for Linux a native FS like ext4,btrfs,XFS or whatever you
> personally prefer.
>
> Though the best would be indeed 3 partitions for each OS.
> NTFS for Windows
> And then HFS+ for OS X
>
> For example I use on my backup HDD NTFS for Windows and btrfs for my
> Linux Systems

Hi Kevin,

if you use maildir, I bet there is not a single mail bigger than 100 MB.
So ALL mails are 40 GB, but may be hundreds and thousands small ones ...?

Or did you compress all files in one 40GB tar/gz/zip/... ?

So fat32 is good for small files.

BUT if you like to transfer as well e.g. DVD iso images larger than > 4
GB that might be a problem.

From what I think is good for you to go with, you could do a "rsync ...
magic needed options" that maildir to the FAT32 Disk.

So you can read it on all systems without extra tools.

Furthermore if you want to do an other backup or "update" your files
run
an other rsync ... so you dont have to compress a big archive all the time.

As the others pointed out, what do you want to do, what is your requirement?

Especially in a Linux/Mac/Win World there is no one sizes fits all.

An other thing is: If you dont need to move your external disk around a
lot or take it with you on the go, think of a NAS; e.g. two disks,
mirrored raid so you can access it without big problems from all OSs ..


my2cents. /G?tz



Am 08.08.15 um 18:15 schrieb Kevin Laurie:
> Dear Christian,
> Thanks for your feedback.
> The HDD will not accept larger than 4GB (as its in FAT format). Its a new
> external HDD. Thinking of the best format(that would work with Mac , Win
> and Linux) .seems like a challenge.
> What's your view on NTFS? And why not exFAT?
> 
> Thanks
> Kevin
> 
> On Saturday, August 8, 2015, Christian Kivalo <ml+dovecot at valo.at>
wrote:
> 
>>
>>
>> Am 08. August 2015 06:56:55 MESZ, schrieb Kevin Laurie <
>> superinterstellar at gmail.com <javascript:;>>:
>>> Hello,
>>> Yesterday I tried to back up a 40GB maildir .
>>> I tried to move the maildir from home to external HDD but failed.
>>> Decided
>>> then to compress it(which took several hours). Now changing the
disk
>>> format
>> >from FAT to exFAT to allow the transfer for the large compressed
file.
>>>
>>> How does one back up emails on a external drive?
>>> Some advice would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> i backup my maildir with rsync to my home nas.
>>
>> i assume you are using linux or similar, so when backing up to an
external
>> hdd i'd also use rsync to copy over the maildir as is to the
external hdd
>> but use a different filesystem n that hdd like ext4 or xfs or anything
else
>> than fat/vfat/exfat.
>>
>> when something goes wrong you can just copy the files back.
>>
>> what was the error message you got when you tried to copy to the ext.
hdd?
>>
>> regards
>> - c
>>


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