[Dovecot] Virtual users - what is better Maildir or mbox?

[J E Lyon]

On 25 Jun 2012, at 10:44, Charles Marcus wrote:

> On 2012-06-25 3:58 AM, J E Lyon <role.Dovecot-Readers at JLAssocs.com> wrote:
>> I've not come up with any significant advantages of mbox that count
>> for much in my experiences and installations . . Would be interested
>> to hear of suggested advantages that I might have overlooked
> 
> One major advantage of mbox (and now mdbox) over maildir is the time it takes to back things up for larger mail stores.
> 
> It takes much less time to compare a single mbox file that contains 20,000 messages (and rsync only the changed bits) than it does to compare read/compare 20,000 individual files (maildir)...
> 
> I too like maildir, but am seriously considering implementing a solution where older mail is automatically archived to slower/cheaper SATA III based storage using mdbox format.

Very interesting. I use "rdiff-backup" as a cronjob in the wee hours (, so the fact it takes a while to work out what to incrementally save, doesn't matter to me -- but the point is that I know it's an issue and have addressed it that way.

I too have contemplated some automated archiving of older mail . . it's getting closer to needing to be addressed at some point soon I think.

J.