Yahoo Mail

[Saint Jack]

The hard disc in my laptop computer (Intel i5 with Windows 7 Home Edition) badly needs to be re-formatted, it takes about 3+ minutes from "power on" to being ready for use and even then it can be incredibly slow. I can replace all the software I'm presently using plus all my files are backed-up to an external hard disc drive. BUT, what I'm very concerned with is my Yahoo Mail Folders, these contain e-mails which I MUST keep. I've heard that there is no export capability in Yahoo Mail although I find this hard to believe. If anyone knows how to save Yahoo Mail Folders to a non-Yahoo location PLEASE let me know. Printing each e-mail or sending them to another e-mail account is not practical due to the sheer volume. Many thanks.

[Saab Dastard]

What email client do you use on your PC?

[Saint Jack]

I'm afraid I'm woefully IT illiterate, but I believe my e-mail client is Internet Explorer.

[PJD1]

If you are accessing your email via a web browser then your emails are not stored locally on your hard drive, they are stored on your email providers servers. Reformatting your hard drive will have no effect on them.

[FlightDetent]

Saint Jack This is not what you came looking for, but it is what you might need.

You will not re-format the drive, but rather replace it entirely. Go buy an SSD drive (basically a giant flash drive, no moving parts). A local computer shack (not an electronics store!) kid will connect it to our machine, and using the bundled migration software they will mirror the full content, bit by bit, of the old drive onto the new one. Then power down and make a physical swap.

The machine won't tell the hardware difference, and the speed you'd get will knock you off the chair. It will not solve the problem of your W7 installation being due to re-install, but the symptoms will be hidden due to the sheer data transfer power of the new device.

Yes, it can be done on a laptop too, it is a matter of no more than 16 screws in and out. While the case is open, by the sound of your trouble you would greatly benefit from increasing the operational memory (RAM) with an additional slot-in module (provided the socket is there).

Total cost?
256 GB SSD (do not go for smaller) below 70 USD with tax https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX500-250GB-NAND-Internal/dp/B0781VSXBP (you do want the MX500 line)
work: about 14 USD
memory, it kind of depends. See the boilerplate of your notebook and google away. Or send a picture.

[Jetstream67]

If you MUST keep them then I would suggest getting an IT professional to check the PC over.

Reformatting by the way will not achieve much that a thorough clear-out of temporary files and redundant programmes won't also do in much less time. Windows own disk clean-up can do a lot and free programmes like ccleaner can do more. Back everything up first though (see later)
For a non SSD laptop being able to actually use the PC within 2 minutes of 'cold' power-on is quite good and many take 4 - 5. To be usable from cold in 1 minute or less you need a SSD drive, fast motherboard, memory and processor and windows 10.

You may also find your windows version is a makers (OEM) edition and if you do 'reformat' the entire drive it is likely to have many driver and licence issues. The better process is to save everything elsewhere and then use the laptop "factory restore" process.

Regarding Yahoo mail if you only access it as webmail (using internet explorer you say) the messages are probably all up there in the yahoo servers. Yahoo mail folders people mention are usually sub-folders for the server inbox etc and are also on yahoos servers.
Use a trusted other persons PC to log on as you normally do on yours (don't save password) and check exactly what is on line

If you use or have previously used an off line mail client like Window mail, windows live mail, outlook, outlook express etc it is likely some or all of the emails have been downloaded (and maybe deleted from yahoo servers) and are stored on your hard disk. The folders may be called Yahoo mail or anything else.

Folders on the PC (and associated mail contact lists) can be easily backed up elsewhere too and then substituted for the default files of the same programme on a re-built PC. You can also use a mail client like outlook to download (copy not delete!) everything that is on Yahoos servers and store these in an accessible 'offline' format on a PC
Knowing what you are doing and if it 'looks right' is key or it won't work. As you say the messages are critical I'm not going to say more.
Get a pro to find any critical files on your Laptop and back them up for you and demonstrate how to access / restore them. If the laptop stops working you may very glad you did/have this.

The same professional can quickly create a backup of the entire laptop harddrive that would mean if whatever you do next goes wrong you can restore everything as it was before. . One way of doing this economically is to remove the existing drive and make it your backup in a drawer. Then 'clone' it onto a new drive (can be a SSD or mechanical drive.
People like to swap to SSD's but my experience is that if the existing drive is large and full and/or the PC (especially the processor, memory and motherboard) is actually not that fast you will pay a lot for a SSD and the Laptop overall will maybe start 1 minute faster. This can be a bit disappointing if you bought a 1TB laptop SSD
Again whoever is going to do the backup /swap can inform you of the likely outcome

[FlightDetent]

Personal bad experience with CC cleaner. Or more precisely with a too eager user. Suggesting a new rotational HDD sounds out of place in 2019.

[Guest 112233]

Personal bad experience with CC cleaner. Or more precisely with a too eager user. Suggesting a new rotational HDD sounds out of place in 2019.

This is a recurring problem with PC's as they get older: This might be useful https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN26466.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANag7PRP3VwZyTVOrqwNJhB6gbvySQKlJMvObN _u8oQJ7Hn9GCkFP3Nojf9WTM3LnyKflzwVcFVq0a6oq2KS9CMAt5RLW9EP1Z F5NdS5OxGavoRCoq71E1Da7UTNgMk8gddDNmo75KsGUycQ6Ad_KYWpUzUz2x wpddiLUA_7uHk9 (https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN26466.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29 vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANag7PRP3VwZyTVOrqwNJhB6g bvySQKlJMvObN_u8oQJ7Hn9GCkFP3Nojf9WTM3LnyKflzwVcFVq0a6oq2KS9 CMAt5RLW9EP1ZF5NdS5OxGavoRCoq71E1Da7UTNgMk8gddDNmo75KsGUycQ6 Ad_KYWpUzUz2xwpddiLUA_7uHk9)

I know from your previous post, that you have file copies on external HDD's (Good same as me) - Looking at the obvious, 3 1/2 Minutes to boot in Win 7 is very slow indeed and you may have a failing HDD on the PC, so it not a good idea to subject the drive to cleaning up unless you have cloned it first. If you look on Amazon (for example) there are disk cloning units for around the £35-40 Mark inc postage. I have not used one of these yet so all the usual caveats apply

I have put HDD's in USB enclosures both the 2.5" &the 3.5" types. I suggest that you consider using cloning units as an experiment but look at the reviews (remember Amazon scrambles the types in reviews) and of course other resellers are available.

CAT III

[Jetstream67]

Personal bad experience with CC cleaner. Or more precisely with a too eager user. Suggesting a new rotational HDD sounds out of place in 2019.
In many cases I'd agree. but . .
ccleaner: I did say back everything up first. I too have had one bad (recoverable) experience 3 years ago ; to be fair the system was pretty messed up anyway.
Probably used it successfully 100's of times on many many systems by now though. Read the options and pick only what you need etc . .
Various editions of windows installation, updates, checkdisk, or other failures have wasted 100 times more of my time and endangered far more TB's of data :-)

HDDs. Well I am not the only disappointed user who has paid many £100's for a 1TB SSD drive that barely increased the laptop's speed (even on a clear re-build etc.). Traced to poor MB storage performance especially on battery on a supposedly fast Asus laptop so we live and learn.
Didn't make it a terrible upgrade for other reasons like drop-proofing and noise but not value for money as a performance upgrade.

We don't know the OP's laptop spec, current HDD size / usage or the age of the laptop. It may not even have a SATA drive at all or have it on a poor peripheral controller so while share your enthusiasm to upgrade too I'm just saying it may not be all that cheap, easy or satisfying

CATIII I was talking time to being able to do work. W7 typically boots and shows you a login or desktop in 1 - 2 minutes from cold on a real-world laptop with antivirus etc. but the time to have a functioning web browser or email client can easily be 3 -4 minutes on a low powered laptop. Agree this grows from there to hours as the system degrades and storage fills.

[Guest 112233]

Jetstream67

Yes just for reference, I have an oldish Opterion (4 Years old) A good spec (I7U,12 GB of RAM ( A VM Box really)) running Win 8.1 & Modern Norton but not the Deluxe package that’s hobbled by a slow WD 1TB HDD and that takes <2 Minutes from cold to Browser/Thunderbird and it feels OK. But I'm keeping a close eye on drive temperatures 41 C (too high) and the Chip/Motherboard is running between 35-51 Degrees C depending on work load; again too high. On older kit, drive indexing can be a big hold up. My doddery Win 7 Pro Vostro 1310 has a 4 Minute effective time to application boot.

CAT III

[Alchad]

If you are accessing your email via a web browser then your emails are not stored locally on your hard drive, they are stored on your email providers servers. Reformatting your hard drive will have no effect on them.

Yahoo mail IS web based so emails are sited on the Yahoo servers.

Simple check, don't know how old your machine is but try scrolling down your sent folder, on mine I can find emails I sent 10 years ago which is the pc before my present one and I didn't do any email back up. Documents and photos etc obviously do need to be backed up.

Regards

[PJD1]

Yahoo mail IS web based so emails are sited on the Yahoo servers.

Simple check, don't know how old your machine is but try scrolling down your sent folder, on mine I can find emails I sent 10 years ago which is the pc before my present one and I didn't do any email back up. Documents and photos etc obviously do need to be backed up.

Regards

Not quite sure why you are replying to my post? I was not the one asking the question, I was pointing out to the OP that if he was using a web browser to access his email then it was not stored on his local drive. Yahoo mail, along with many others can be accessed via their web interface but it can also be accessed via a dedicated email client such as Outlook. Depending on how you set up your account in the email client the mail may or may not be stored locally. If you use IMAP the messages are left on the server, if you use POP they are downloaded to the local drive.