Of course it would depend on the size of the e-mails, and if there were any attachments. As a reference:

My monthly usage limit on my rural 3G network is 15GB. The provider's webpage provides the following for that limit:

E-mai1: text page without attachments
Monthly allotment: 1,536,000

A GB is a GB no matter how it is being used. Go to the link below for verifications.

DA

Here is a link that might be useful: Thumb Cellular

Thank you !!!

...Sorry for being 'so simple' - but if I have 10,000 emails at 2 pages each I'd have 20,000 pages.

15 GB can handle 1,536,000 pages.

So my 10,000 emails (20,000 total pages) would fill up only about 1.3% of a 15 GB Flash Drive- if I transferred all of them to the FD ?

Is this math/concept correct ???

Thank You !!!

As I reported individual size of the e-mails and attachments are part of the equation. Your e-mails are two pages each so my reference would consider the e-mails to be 20K. However, you are talking about a 16GB drive. There will be more than enough room and then plenty of space left over.

You may want to consider putting the e-mails on a smaller drive. Let's say 2GB. When creating a formula using the site's information it would hold more than 200,000 pages. You could then save your bigger drive for something else.

This post was edited by damccoy on Mon, Jan 28, 13 at 7:45

Remember that devices do fail. If certainty of the backup is important to you, have two or three copies. Keep at least one in a different geographic location (like in a safe deposit box, or with a friend or relative out of town, or one at work and one at home, etc.). Access each periodically to be sure they still work.

It's cheap insurance, thumb drives and SD cards (which are the same thing with a different connection format) are inexpensive.

The wisdom of saving can also be affected by the email platform being used. For example Outlook Express, with XP and prior, the emails have a .eml suffix and are very difficult to open once removed from Outlook Express so become virtually useless. Just a thought for consideration.

This really, really hurts me, but I have to agree with Snidely. If these documents are of value to you the need to do multiple backups is imperative. In fact, I regularly recommend multiple backups over various media. All current media are in their forecasted retention span, not their proven life expectancy, and there are no guarantees. Plus, their is not one that I have yet not seen fail at one time or another.

DA

I must say that DA's contribution displays, yet again, the profundity of his judgement and knowledge.

{{gwi:1444457}}

No, it only shows truth as my entire life has been based on a spirit of honor. One of the adages of said spirit is "never be something you do not want to be".

If I were "Gibbs" it would be a rule.

DA

You guys are great !
Enjoyed your banter !
Thanks for helping someone with 'minimal' computer skills, knowledge, & jargon !
Have a great day !!!

LaGrange NY

zep - Oh curses, foiled again! Hopefully you don't dig up Mrs. Whiplash's photo, she wouldn't like that.

DA - My comment was in jest, as I trust yours was. If I detect a trace of military/law enforcement in your creed, thanks for that.

Wonder what will happen in the future with what would normally become historical docs and photo's now that so much is electronic storage media. Certainly our saved and cherished CD/DVD, hard drive platters, memory sticks will be totally unusable in 100 or 200 years. History ends in the near future ?

I think there's two issues at work with your comment mikie. The first, which many historians have spoken about, is that the lost habits of letter and diary writing mean that much less material will be available for historical analysis in the future. Email archives aren't as common as boxes stuffed with old letters, and email archives typically have much more worthless stuff in them.

The second thing, the changes in storage media over time, I think isn't so much of a problem. There used to be lots of stuff stored on 8 and 5.25 inch floppy disks. They're not lost to the future, that worth keeping was migrated to later generations of storage media. Places like the Library of Congress and National Archives are digitizing many parts of their collections to protect the availability of their contents for the future. All that stuff gets rolled forward as technology changes.