[Dovecot] mbox vs maildir

[Mark Nienberg]

Don Russell wrote:
> I'm using Dovecot 1.0.1-12 on Linux/Fedora 7
> along with sendmail and procmail all running on the same box
> mail is stored in mbox format
> 
> It's a small system with a half dozen or so e-mail "accounts". Each with 
> 40-60MB of messages in various folders.
> 
> I keep seeing messages about how mbox is antiquated and anybody with 
> more than 100 messages etc should not use mbox, but use maildir instead.
> 
> I'm not entirely convinced.... there seem to be pros and cons for each. 
> Is there a discussion somewhere that really highlights why one format is 
> so much better than the other?

One factor not often discussed: When I switched from mbox to maildir the size of 
incremental backups went down to a fraction of its previous size (only the new 
messages are backed up, not the entire mailbox).  It allowed me to do incremental 
backups to disk instead of tape, which I still use for full backups.

P.S.  consider maildrop instead of procmail if you switch to maildir.  See info in 
the dovecot wiki.

Mark