Manage your Backup Locations
Every account has exactly one enabled Primary Backup Location. Horcrux tries it first when browsing, restoring, exporting, migrating, or building a message-content index. Primary can be local, SFTP, or Amazon S3.
Open Manage Account → Backup Locations to add a location or manage the copies you already have. A saved location can serve multiple accounts. Each has its own backup folder. Credentials stay in Apple Keychain, and search indexes, Jobs, and logs stay on your Mac.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Keep Updated | Includes an additional location in future backup runs. Primary always stays enabled. |
| Make Primary | Copies and verifies the current backup at that location before switching the preferred read role. The former Primary remains a complete location. |
| Copy Now | Brings one additional enabled location up to date without downloading the email account again. |
| Change | Moves a local Backup Location after copying the current backup to the new folder. |
| Remove | Stops using the location for this account. Existing files are not deleted, and a profile still used by another account remains available. |
A Primary location cannot be disabled or removed until another enabled, complete location becomes Primary.
How copies stay in sync
A location records the revision as complete only after its saved mail, backup records, and completion information can be read back. The new revision becomes available after at least one location completes it. A failure elsewhere produces its own Job and a location that can be caught up later.
- If one location succeeds and another fails, the successful copy remains valid and the account can use the new revision.
- If no location completes, Horcrux keeps the previous committed revision visible and preserves reusable pending work.
- Copy Now can publish the current revision to a lagging location without deliberately downloading all the mail again.
- Automatic Backup History cleanup waits until Horcrux can prove it will not remove the last healthy copy.
Horcrux can read across locations automatically
Primary is tried first. If it is unavailable, incomplete, or missing a requested saved message, Horcrux tries enabled local additional locations and then remote additional locations. After an operation finds a working location, it keeps using that location until it fails, then continues through the remaining candidates.
This fallback applies when Browse opens a message, Migration reads a saved backup, Horcrux restores or exports mail, and content search reads message bodies. Horcrux uses its local catalog to find the message, then reads the saved file from the available location.
Horcrux records the location it used in the interface or Job log. Reading from another copy leaves your Primary setting in place. Reading from remote storage can use billable bandwidth.
If verification reports missing files, run Recover Missing Messages to repair the affected backup.