searching a way to archive away old emails and still be able to search them

[rikona]

On Mon, 12 Apr 2021 07:26:35 +0200
robert rottermann <robert at redcor.ch> wrote:

> I am looking for a way to move away some 100’000 emails I collected
> over the last 15 years, but I would like to still be able to search
> them.
> 
> 
> My situation is as such:
> 
> I get all my email on robert at redcor.ch <mailto:robert at redcor.ch>which
> I forward to rw at redcor.ch <mailto:rw at redcor.ch>.
> 
> The mails at robert at redcor.ch <mailto:robert at redcor.ch>I do not touch
> and leave them as they come.
> 
> 
> The mails at rw at redcor.ch <mailto:rw at redcor.ch>on the other hand I
> read, manage, sort into folder, etc.
> 
> Only when I am searching for some old stuff I go into
> robert at redcor.ch <mailto:robert at redcor.ch>'s mailbox.
> 
> 
> As you can imagine, the number of emails has become huge. In fact, at
> the moment I have 162479 unread emails.
> 
> Working with such a lot of mails is very slow and cumbersome.
> 
> So I would like to move everything older than about 2 years to an
> archive outside the mail structure. However, I would still like to be
> able to search through them similarly to what I do now with
> Thunderbird.
> 
> 
> Can somebody give me an idea, how to do that?

I have perhaps about 25 years of archived emails, all searchable with
Recoll, which can do sophisticated searches to get just what you want.
My emails are mostly stored as text, with each email as a file. Lots of
files, but very convenient. I use claws mail, which stores email that
way, so very easy to archive - just copy to archive location.

And, I also archive a couple of Tb of other data and files too. So, if
there are a couple of files with info similar to whats in the email,
that shows up too in a search - that's sometimes very nice to know. Its
an indexed search so is much faster than searching everything. I like
it a LOT, and use it many times a day.

A bit different, but very nice to find things...

Rik