Windows Mail Backup

• Overview
• Backup Privilege
• Deleted/Moved Mails Notification
• Backup process while Windows Mail application is in use (open)
• Best Practice
• Trouble shooting Tips
• Limitations

Overview

As a part of Windows Mail backup can backup mails, accounts, Windows Mail settings, calendar and contacts.

While configuring Windows Mail Backup with , one should be aware of the following points:

1. To backup Windows Mail, VSS option should be enabled to backup the data without having to shutdown Windows Mail. This is because Windows Mail database and temporary log files are exclusively locked by Windows Mail application.

2. Database and log files might be skipped if VSS is disabled and if the backup is run while the Windows application is running. To run a successful backup with VSS disabled, Windows Mail application should be closed before the backup process starts.

3. In Windows Vista, to initiate VSS based Backup, windows user needs Administrator user privileges (or at least Administrator group privileges) to run . Otherwise, will skip the Windows Mail database and other log files for backup. If the user doesn't have administrator privileges, then Windows Mail should be closed before the backup process to complete the backup successfully without skipping any files.

Backup Privilege

In Windows Vista , there are two types of Users - Standard Users and Administrator. Standard Users have less privilege and they don't have access to the system resources such as ("%programfiles%", "%windir%" and "HKLM\Software" in Registry entries). Accessing these files/folders needs security elevation. "Administrator" user has rights to access all system resources. In Windows Vista, if administrator user is logged in as a Standard user, the Administrator user gets only Standard access token and when the Administrator user accesses those resources, the use would also need security elevation.

Deleted/Moved Mails Notification

Windows Mail uses ESE (Extensible Storage Engine) Technology for indexing. Every single mail is stored as a flat file (*.eml file). If a user deletes a mail from "Inbox" folder, then the .eml file corresponding to that mail will be deleted from the "Windows Mail" folder. Directory Monitoring should be enabled in to notify if mails were deleted/moved to other folder in the Windows Mail application.

Backup process while Windows Mail application is in use (open)

Windows Mail uses ESE(Extensible Storage Engine) Technology to store the mails in the client system.

ESE Technology uses edb.log and edb.chk point files to avoid the database inconsistency caused by power failure, system crash and archive the ACID Prosperity. Hence, Windows Mail logs all the transactions in the log file and at the end, updates all the transaction to Windows Mail database while closing the Windows Mail application. The details of mails deleted or moved are initially stored in the log files by Windows Mail application. These log files will be committed to the database files when the Windows Mail application is closed.

will backup the database files as well as the log files. During restore, will restore the database as well as the log files. However, after restore, unless the log files are committed to the database (by closing the Windows Mail application), the information stored in the log files such as read mails, deleted mails, mail moved to different folder etc will not be available. Therefore, after restore read mails may show up as unread, deleted mails may be still present and moved mails may still be in the old location. However, these details will be appropriately updated once the Windows Mail application is closed and opened once.

Best Practice

Configure Windows Mail backup using with "Automatic Directory Monitoring" and "Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)" options enabled in Windows Vista machines. Configure hourly/daily/weekly incremental backups with weekly/monthly additional full backups.

Trouble shooting Tips

	I have deleted some mails from my inbox folder, but still these mails are listed in the restore tree and not showing up as deleted.
Cause 1: This problem will occur if Automatic Directory Monitoring option has been disabled for the Windows Mail backup schedule. Solution 1: Edit and save the configured Windows Mail backup schedule by enabling "Automatic Directory Monitoring" option in the "Advanced Options". The deleted mail notification will then be propagated to the backup server and the mails will be listed as deleted files in the restore page. Cause 2: If Windows Mail default storage location had been changed after configuring the Windows Mail backup using . Since will look for the deleted/moved mail notifications in the old Windows Storage location, this new Storage location will not be updated in the "Automatic Directory Monitoring" list. Solution 2: Edit and save the configured Windows Mail backup schedule without modifying existing backup configurations. The new Windows Mail storage location will then be updated in the "Automatic Directory Monitoring" list. Now the deleted mail notification should be propagated to the backup server and should list them as deleted files in the restore page.

	Windows Mail Backup fails to dump the registry entries in the local dump location <INSTALLATION_HOME>/data/Windows Mail/{UserName}/WindowsMailBackup.reg.
Cause : Windows user may not be having enough permissions to access the {INSTALLATION_HOME} Dir. Solution : should be run with Administrator privileges.

	Windows mail does not shutdown properly.
Cause : After restoring the files from Windows Mail backup, sometimes you might see the error "Windows mail does not shutdown properly" on starting Windows Mail application. Solution : This is a harmless error and Windows Mail will recover automatically.

	Problem occurs in backing up the Windows mail files and folders while Windows Mail application is in use.
Cause : Windows Mail databases, logs and check point files are exclusively locked by Windows Mail when it is open. To backup those files using , Windows Mail should be closed or should use Volume Shadow copy Services to backup. Solution : Enable Volume Shadow copy Services for that backup configuration. Note :If the backup skips some files even after enabling VSS, then check whether the user has Administrator privileges.

Limitations

1. Windows Mail database and temporary log file might be skipped even if VSS is enabled for backup when Windows Mail rejects 's read request of its database. This might happen when Windows mail is about to open the database while backup is in progress. The files that are skipped will however be backed up in the next schedule.

2. VSS snapshot error might occur for Windows Mail temporary files(tmp.edb) and some deleted mails. These temporary files will be created at the time of closing/opening the Windows Mail application. will search for these temporary files listed for backup and generate VSS snapshot error if these files were not found for backup.

3. Temporary files(tmp.edb) may be sometimes skipped with the error "Error in Signature file"