On 25 Jun 2012, at 10:44, Charles Marcus wrote: > On 2012-06-25 3:58 AM, J E Lyon <role.dovecot-read...@jlassocs.com> wrote: >> I've not come up with any significant advantages of mbox that count >> for much in my experiences and installations . . Would be interested >> to hear of suggested advantages that I might have overlooked > > One major advantage of mbox (and now mdbox) over maildir is the time it takes > to back things up for larger mail stores. > > It takes much less time to compare a single mbox file that contains 20,000 > messages (and rsync only the changed bits) than it does to compare > read/compare 20,000 individual files (maildir)... > > I too like maildir, but am seriously considering implementing a solution > where older mail is automatically archived to slower/cheaper SATA III based > storage using mdbox format.
Very interesting. I use "rdiff-backup" as a cronjob in the wee hours (, so the fact it takes a while to work out what to incrementally save, doesn't matter to me -- but the point is that I know it's an issue and have addressed it that way. I too have contemplated some automated archiving of older mail . . it's getting closer to needing to be addressed at some point soon I think. J.
