[Dovecot] Dovecot readable compressed mail archive

Hello.

Is Dovecot able to create and/or read any sort of compressed mail archive? We have a large installation with a few users who need to keep a large amount of email available. With maildir this means a large number of individual files, leading to additional load on our backup process. Even using a compressed mbox file as an archive would help, but only if Dovecot is able to interact with this file seamlessly while keeping current email in the maildir format.

Please pardon if this is old business, but I haven't been able to find any reference to it by searching.

Thanks.

-Dave

-- Dave Hall System Administrator Computer Science Binghamton University davehall@cs.binghamton.edu 607-760-2328 (Cell) 607-777-4641 (Office)