Restoration of Archived or Lost/Deleted E-Mail 

Archived E-mail:

Northwestern University central e-mail servers (casbah, merle, lulu, and hecky) operate with consistent limits of 50MB for pending e-mail messages within individual accounts. As centrally provided accounts approach the their limit, a series of warning messages will be sent prior to archiving the pending e-mail. Accounts that reach 100MB in pending message space will no longer receive messages until the space is reduced or the pending messages are archived. For the complete policy regarding quota issues for Northwestern e-mail accounts, please visit Management of Received E-mail on Central Service Hosts.

Archived messages can be restored from backup storage for a period of 120 days.

Please note: This restoration service applies only to centrally provided University accounts. Users with @u.northwestern.edu accounts should use caution when deleting mail from the 2GB storage accounts, as there is no set restoration process established. 

Restoration Procedure:

Individuals interested in restoring their archived e-mail should send an e-mail message to email-accounts@northwestern.edu. The message should include the user’s NetID and the approximate date/time the inspool was archived.

Restoration of the e-mail archive may take up to two business days after NUIT receives the e-mail request.

Lost or Deleted E-mail:

The e-mail inspool on each of the four central e-mail servers is backed up nightly at 2:00 a.m. and kept on backup tape for seven days. The inspool contains e-mail messages with two different statuses:

1. Messages that have not yet been read;
2. Messages that have been read but have not been removed to another computer or to a storage folder on the server.

NUIT cannot guarantee that specific messages will be included on a particular inspool backup tape. If a user’s e-mail client is set to “delete mail from server” then it may be possible the messages are no longer available for restoration.

Please note that user-created IMAP folders to which users may have transferred read messages are not backed up.

Restoration Procedure and Cost:

Individuals interested in restoring their deleted e-mail from backup tape should send an e-mail message to email-accounts@northwestern.edu. The message should include the user’s NetID and host (casbah, merle, lulu, or hecky), and the specific date (not day) from which the e-mail inspool should be restored. Please note that only e-mail that has been kept for seven days from receipt of payment can be restored.

An invoice will be sent to individuals paying via a Chart of Accounts number. The invoice should be completed and faxed back to the number on the invoice.

The cost for restoring deleted e-mail from backup tape is $200. Restoration of deleted e-mail may take up to three business days after NUIT receives the completed invoice/paid receipt. Payment must be made prior to the restoration.