EML versus PST in e-mail programs

Posted by Franz Grieser
Aug 4, 2011 at 12:07 PM

Hi Graham

>- does using thousands of separate .eml files (one for each
>e-mail) make a program using them faster or slower than a program (i.e. Outlook) using
>a single (large) .pst file?

That depends on the implementation.

>- what are the security implications of using .eml files?
>I.e. I imagine that if my computer was hacked into people could open the .pst file or the
>.eml files to read their contents, but my gut feeling is that the .pst file is better
>protected. Is that a correct assumption?

Sorry: No. Data in a PST file is not encrypted. It’s not plain text either. But you can easily get software that opens PST files and lets you read or extract data.

From a security point of view, however, I’d find a collection of thousands of files (1 per email) preferable to one single file containing all your data (emails, tasks, contacts, ...). If the PST file gets corrupted, you may lose all the data in it, if one EML file gets corrupted, you lose that one email. There are, however, 3 or 4 excellent rescue tools that can be used to repair PST files or extract data.

Franz