backing up cornell email

["Kamaraju Kusumanchi" <]

Hi,

    I am reaching the quota on the cornell email and I was asked to
trim down my account. I am looking for suggestions on how to backup
the emails. Currently I use thunderbird + IMAP to access cornell email
on a Debian Etch machine. Here is what I am thinking.

1) Sort the email according to the year it was received. All the
emails from say 2004 is to be downloaded first and then copied on to a
CD. Then download all the emails from 2005 and save it on to another
CD etc.,

Has anyone done this? I do not know how to go about doing this. My
email account contains tons of folders and subfolders etc., and I do
not want to simply delete my old email as it might be useful at a
later point of time.

Since I am a privacy freak, I do not wish to forward these emails on
to web based email systems such as gmail or yahoo mail which offer
more storage.


If you have any suggestions regarding this or if you have a better
idea of backing up the emails, I am all ears.

thanks
raju