A Question about Thunderbird and maildir status
Thunderbird uses mbox (single file per folder) storage by default. This is not a good arrangement when some folders grow to 2GB over the year; each backup requires the entire file, and that becomes 1GB and more per day for each of those folders for much of the year, ending at 2GB per day each.
I find some mention and discussion of maildir (one file per message) with Thunderbird (as a plug-in). But most of what I see is ancient history, and a lot of it warned of significant problems and dangers. It was 'experimental' for Thunderbird 60, and nothing said subsequently. I see some success claimed from 2016 (Wilders Security). That's old. The Mozilla Wiki warns of dangers and data loss, last updated 2017. Support Mozilla (undated) says you risk your data. http://mzl.la/1GDeRsp
Is there any up-to-date information? Does it work, reliably? Can I bet my data on it? Or is maildir in Thunderbird a no-show?
Chosen solution
You should post this question in the Thunderbird forum.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird
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Chosen Solution
You should post this question in the Thunderbird forum.
Sorry, don't know how I got it crossed up over to here. Moved. Thank you.
It is not wise to store excessive mail history locally for reasons you are discovering first hand.
email is not ftp email is not archive email is not a web viewer
Sorry, I disagree. Long term storage off-site is beyond risky; a change in their Terms & Conditions and *Poof*, your history is gone. And history is the easy stuff, since it is not changing. If it is not local, most systems cannot quickly search it, and that is important; I had to quote out of a 2011 email just the other day. Storing the dynamic stuff IMAP is actually a different question, but the same issue - someone else decides what of yours to keep around and for how long, and stuff can (and does) just disappear. I just want my data under my control, stored locally and efficiently (time, then space, with backup considered) and able to work and search through emails when I am out in the boonies, 50 miles from WiFi and Ethernet. I hate to hold them up for comparison (they have plenty of other problems), but in this, Apple gets it right with Mail and Time Machine (except for archiving old year's mail). Thuunderbird, with working MailDir (and searchable archives) would be the ticket. Mbox is pre-1980 technology as pre-1980 solution to pre-1980 problems. Email is not anything but email - and an archive of emails going back to c. 1999.