A dedicated, easy-to-use backup app for Apple Mail and Entourage
Email backup is a simple, easy-to-use app that offers dedicated email backup for Apple Mail and Entourage v.X and 2004.
It backs up all the files needed to restore your email in the event of a corruption or some other disaster.
The single-paned interface allows you to specify the backup destination and options to schedule the day and time:
A revised version released today adds an option to turn verbose logging on and off, fixes a rare freezing issue that occurred on some systems and adds a progress indicator for manual backups.
Of course, there are many options for creating a regular backup regime. Hawk Wings has posted about many of them—BackityMac, Synk, applescripts, Dejà vu, although there are others.
UPDATE: As Steve points out in the comments, this app only backs up your preferences file and the essential files and folders in your ~/Library/Mail folder. If you want to back up any saved or modified attachments or your Address Book (which I think is part of any sensible Mail backup) you will need to find another method to include all the files needed for a full backup (listed in an earlier Hawk Wings post).
Email Backup is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site 
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August 18th, 2006 at 2:05 am
And how does one recover from this backup? Copying files is only half the solution.
August 18th, 2006 at 3:05 am
This program does not copy all the files you recommend to backup in this post:
http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/09/26/backing-up-apple-mail/
August 18th, 2006 at 7:32 am
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August 18th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Thanks, Steve. You’re quite right. I’ll amend the post.
August 24th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
[...] Email Backup, a simple and easy-to-use email backup utility that I posted about just last week, has been updated, adding support for Thunderbird and Eudora. [...]
September 27th, 2006 at 1:18 am
What is the advantage of just backing up your mail, as opposed to simply including ~/Library/Mail in your regular backups with all your documents, photos, music, etc.?
September 27th, 2006 at 9:09 am
For starters, including the Mail folder doesn’t backup everything that you will need in the event of catastrophe. See further:
http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/09/26/backing-up-apple-mail/
September 27th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
Fair enough, but the other stuff Mail needs is also in ~/Library, thus one can easily incorporate it into a regular backup regime. My setup is to use rsync (called from a daily cron job) backing up all of ~/Library, with an “excludes” file telling rsync to ignore the Caches directory, and maybe a few other directories comprising cached junk from web browsers. I definitely want to back up all of Preferences and Application Support, so all my programs are safe not just Mail.app. It just seems weird to tailor backups to a specific application. Better to back up too much, than too little.
September 28th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
[...] Maza Digital has re-released its Email Backup app as a shareware app called Email Backup Pro. [...]