Emails normally contain a wealth of information that are valuable to most users. They can contain account details, important conversations or files and it would be a catastrophe - at least for me - if I would not be able to recover my emails in case of a computer crash. The natural consequence for me is that I create regular backups of my email accounts which are stored on an external hard drive and backup DVD.
I do use MozBackup to backup the data in Thunderbird regularly but what if you use another client ? Amic Email Backup can create backups of the data of nine popular email clients including Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft outlook Express, Opera Mail, Pegasus Mail and The Bat. The user can choose the identities, some would call it profiles, and the data that should be backed up from those profiles. By default everything is selected which means backups are created of account settings, mail folders, message rules, signatures, address books and stationery.
Backups can be password protected for increased security and scheduled so that they are created on a regular basis. It is also possible to define the amount of backups that you want to keep which would mean that older backups will be deleted eventually. Backups that are to large can be split so that they fit on a floppy disk, zip drive or CD.
The restore function can be used to restore the email account on another computer as well which is great if you have purchased a new computer or want to migrate your emails to another one. I'm not sure if the backups are compressed at all because I lack a mail program that is supported by Amic Email Backup