Best Methods to Backup Windows Live Mail to External Hard Drive

Email is a conventional way of communication between people and it is important to take the backup emails time-to-time. When the mailbox size increas, therefore risk of corruption also increases with the size of mailbox. So, it will be good practice to keep backup of emails before of any issue. Here, we will discuss the right way to take the backup emails to external hard drive in EML file format.

What is Windows Live Mail?

Windows Live Mail is a freeware & popular application email client from Microsoft for managing emails. It is a part of the Windows Essentials that includes various programs like – Live Writer, Live Mail, OneDrive, MovieMaker, and Photo Gallery. Just like as Outlook Express on Windows XP and Windows Mail on Vista, it lets you download and store email on your system. For setting up account in the email program, there is a small process. When the messages are transferred to your computer, they are available even without internet connection. Then, the backup of the emails can now be created.

Some important features are –

  • Supports all Webmails such as Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo!
  • Supports emotions and offers spell check
  • Offers a photo email feature to send and receive photos via attachment
  • Offers multi-line message lists
  • Automatically synchronizes with Windows Live contacts
Recommended: Free Methods to Convert EML to PST File Format

Need of Backup to external hard drive

Every email client has a fix holding storage. Apart from this, if one has to save emails from the email platform to their hardware storage. There are few conditions in which you may lose your essential emails as follow –

But taking a backup can avoid above things. One can take backup on an external device to make the data available on multiple locations and different formats that will give other advantages.

#1) Backup Windows Live Mail Manually

In this method you can easily backup on your external hard drive following below steps:

  1. First, create a folder where you want to save the emails.
  2. After that, open Windows Live Mail and login to your account.
  3. Click on the icon then select Export email option.
    Export email
  4. Now select email messages that you want to save.
  5. Click on Browse and select target folder to save backup files. Click on Next.
    Browse to save
  6. Now, select the folders to export, and click on Next.
    select All folders to save
  7. It will take some time; wait for process to finish.
    processing to save emails
  8. After completing the process, click on the Finish.
    export completed

It will backup the Windows Live emails into EML format. For each email, a separate file will be created. After completing all the above steps successfully, you may check exported emails in target folder.

Challenges with Manual Method
  • The process will create a separate EML file, received for each email. Managing these emails becomes a very complicated task.
  • EML files are not supported in Outlook. Not possible to read these emails in Outlook.
  • The manual process does not allow exporting emails from WLM.
#2) Backup Windows Live Mail by an Automated Way

The best technique to backup to hard drive by converting EML files to another format like PST. The purpose of exporting WLM is to your backed up files on multiple platforms. Backup software will be useful for users to backup Windows Live emails, contacts and calendars to an external hard drive in desired file format.

To create backup with a third party tool, perform the following steps:

  1. At first, read all necessary instructions to create backup.
  2. This tool integrates many options to load data in it. You can backup mailbox data manually through the Select Files or Folders option.
  3. Select the required Windows Live Mail folders which you want to backup.
  4. After that, select the file format from the list of file saving options.
  5. Select the destination and file naming options.
  6. Now, examine the process directly in the software. You will see the preview of backup process.
  7. At last, that tool will directly open the destination location.

The software will increase the utilization of emails in multiple email clients. It provides more than 20 formats to save emails. The other benefit of the software is that it can load mailboxes from configured profile.

Conclusion

Here, we have discussed how you can take backup to the external hard drive with both manual and automated methods. The manual method is not always useful and the automated EML to PST tool can convert EML file to PST and save it to user defined location. So, you have other formats too that you can use to backup files on other formats.

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