I converted to dovecot from UWimap about 2 - 3 weeks ago. I kept my email in the original mbox format. The indexing that dovecot does make it much more responsive when I am checking my mailing list folders which 5000+ messages. Not to mention my girlfriends 1.2gig mbox file for one of her high traffic lists (Paintshop pro stuff)

Not to mention it handles outlook express's brain dead way of checking imap folders much faster (i.e. login check one folder logout, loop ad infinitum) so no matter what email client you are using you should see an improvement.

Craig On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 12:30, Eric S. Johansson wrote:

to dovecot from UW imap. I think I will go all the way to maildir while I'm at it. I was having performance problems with mbox format files and converted to mbx but it's not really yielding a huge performance gain. Deletes and moves are still rather slow at times. my mailboxes are typically 2000 to 5000 messages.

I've scanned the mailing lists a bit and picked up some hints on the conversion. Any bits of advice before I convert? Since it's only my own account I'm converting (my wife likes mutt), I'm torn between two different ways of converting the mailboxes. First is to convert all of the mbx format mailboxes back to mbox. Then convert from mbox to maildir. Second is running both imap server simultaneously (obviously one on a different port number) and running some form of a tool to read from one imap server and write to the other.

any better ideas?

many thanks ---eric