Offsite email backup

Dreamhost tries, but does not guarantee, to backup your email through the regular snapshot mechanism. The following from Dreamhost support:

For e-mail addresses that were created along with a user account, for example:

user --> me@domain.com user2 --> me2@domain.com

...you will be able to access your /Maildir folder and backup the messages that are on the server. Because they are tied to the user account, your data and messages are mounted to both the hosting server and your mail server. Backups can be found in the .snapshot folder.

For e-mail addresses that were created individually, they were given user names that looked like "mXXXXXXX"... for example:

m7179999 --> joe@domain.com m6429999 --> mike@domain.com

Since there isn't any kind of user account tied to these addresses, their messages are stored strictly on the mailserver. Backups are located in the typical ".snapshot" fashion, but all of our mailservers are inaccessible to customers, therefore preventing you from accessing the backups.

'''If you're interested in backing up all mail data offsite, it is recommended that you use a mail client to download all of your messages to your personal computer. From there you should be able to locate the messages and back them up accordingly.'''

In short, Dreamhost tries to backup, and can restore everything (if a backup exists). For files in user accounts, including associated email, it can be downloaded to guarantee the backup. For email not associated with user accounts, one must fetch a copy through IMAP or POP3.