How to Backup Apple Mail Emails to External Hard Drive?

Read time 7 minutes

An IMAP account in Apple Mail gets a sizeable storage for 18.25 Gigabyte. It is enough to maintain a professional mailbox and store greater number of emails. When the size of the account is reached to its peak, then you should get rid of older emails and other contents. If your computer does not have such space to handle a large backup, then you can take the backup in External Hard drive. The External Hard drive can be connected/disconnected using the USB cable and it is simple to keep files in it.

You must note that in order to move Apple Mail data to external hard drive, first you have to export its emails to an MBOX file which then can be transferred to any destination drive either external or internal. Fortunately, Apple Mail facilitates a direct approach to export its data to an MBOX file. It should also be noted that MBOX files are not supposed to be opened up by every application specifically Outlook; therefore if you want your Apple Mail data to be converted and saved in PST format, you have to choose a reliable converter tool to convert the resultant MBOX file to PST format and then save it to an external hard drive. We will also highlight an efficient tool for such conversions later in this section.

Now, keeping aside the fact that it is possible to backup Apple Mail emails to external Hard Drive, the main question here is how to do that and most importantly why users require moving their emails to external storages?
Well, here are some common reasons for why a user needs to save their Apple Mail data on external drives.

Perks of having Apple Mail backup

In our day-to-day life, we must back up our important data to keep them safe because “Data is Everything.” So as a user, I consider having a backup of mail is highly advantageous for any business,; they will act as the savior when the emails files or data become corrupt or deleted.

• In case the data is lost, one can easily restore the data with the help of backup without going for an expensive professional solution.
• Apple users have their size limitations with each email client. Therefore, after reaching its limits, having a backup is the only solution to help in saving the data.
• Having a backup in an external hard drive can save you from tragic situations like physical damage, and accidental loss.
• In Apple Mail there is always a high risk of hacking; therefore, the backup data is extremely useful when an email account is hacked, and you want to restore it.

Reasons of Archiving Apple Mail Data to External Hard Drives

Backing up emails is a much needed task for both professional and individual users. Many times emails get affected by virus infections and unauthorized accesses; in such scenarios you backed up data is the only hope left for you. However, there are various other advantages for keeping your emails on external devices. Some of them are briefly listed below:

• Retrieving data from backup is much cheaper and convenient than using other data recovery means.
• In case your email account gets hacked, you will lose all your important data from your email platform. In such case a backed up USB flash drive will help you getting back all your lost data.
• Email platforms whether web or desktop application have limited storage capacity; so, moving your data to an external hard drive will optimize the memory space of your respective email clients.
• Saving your important data on portable hard drives ensures protection from external threats and physical damages.
  Now, we will go through the actual procedure of moving your Apple Mail data to external hard drives. You can perform the migration manually via the client itself.

Manual Method to Export Emails from Apple Mail to an External Hard Drive:

1. Launch Apple Mail on your Mac machine.
2. Select the mailbox folder you wish to export.
3. Then, click Mailbox from the menu bar options.
4. Select Export Mailbox… option from the list.
5. Now, choose to select a destination drive to save the required MBOX file and click the Choose button.

Upon execution of the above steps, your selected data gets successfully exported to the specified location. However, this native method has limitations in terms of usability and platform of the data.

Limitation of Manual Method

The manual method to export emails from Apple Mail to an external hard drive comes with the following limitation-

• There is only one file format available to export email data to the hard drive i.e., MBOX. Hence, you will be restricted because professional email clients like Outlook do not support the MBOX format.
• If you are having a large mailbox file, then it will become a time-consuming process.
• While using the manual method, there is a chance that you will encounter data loss after the completion of the method.

In such scenarios, you will have to convert MBOX files to PST format to access your data in MS Outlook.

Alternative solution

Now with so much of resources available online, it’s hard to find the exact tool that satisfies your requirements. Well, you don’t really have to indulge yourself in this long quest of Internet search to get the right one. We recommend Kernel for MBOX to PST converter for your conversion tasks.

The MBOX to Outlook PST converter is embedded with robust algorithms that helps users convert their MBOX files to PST format with ease. This tool also facilitates conversion of MBOX files to DBX, MSG, EML and other file formats. You just have to download and install the software on your machine to get started.

The home page allows users to select the required MBOX files from their local directories, load them, view the detailed content of each mailbox folder, and save to the desired format.

Final Words

Whether you are a professional or an individual user, creating a backup for your important emails will have significant advantages over time. Mac users are always looking for diverse methods to protect their data. Therefore, in this blog we have covered all necessary information on how to create backup of Apple Mail emails on external hard drives.