EML versus PST in e-mail programs

Posted by Steve
Aug 5, 2011 at 11:14 AM

Franz Grieser wrote:
>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

There is a very active user forum for Intellect that has plenty of suggestions on archiving the data - email in particular. The one way I have chosen is to use the “Archive” function from within Intellect. Essentially you move the data you want to archive to a different folder - and a different user name within Intellect. Once done you can “throw” data there for archival purposes. It works for me, but there are issues to consider beforehand.

Steve