[Dovecot] Any suggestions for backing up an imap server and whould maildir or dbox be better than mbox?

[Eduardo M KALINOWSKI]

From: Götz Reinicke 
> Hi,
> 
> we run a Red Hat EL 5.2 mailserver with dovecot as the imap server. 
> Mails are stored in mbox format and there are about 134GB of mail.
> 
> At the moment users copy their importent mail to their workstation 
> accounts wich are backed up nightly.
> 
> What are your suggestions to back up the mails not copied? Thanks for 
> any comments.

You can simply rsync the whole mail store. Gets pretty efficient after the first run. Or take a look at rdiff-backup if you need to store previous copies.

> BTW: Dose changing the mailbox format from mbox to Maildir or dbox dose 
> have any advantages?

I don't think it makes any difference in this case.