I wish I could punch the idiots that made TheBat!

[Hirudin]

Sorry to start a topic like this after not coming here for so long, but I just lost ~350 messages because aparrently TheBat! doesn't take into account the possibility that maybe, possibly, sometime ever someone's hard drive/partition will ever fill up!!!

Here's what happened, I noticed my D drive was full. I couldn't figure out why though... I hadn't received any messages saying that something couldn't be saved or anything like that... All the pictures I had saved recently seemed to work, I couldn't figure it out...

So later tonight I checked my mail. TheCrap! downloaded my new messages, but when I clicked the Inbox it said some BS about the mailbox being broken and would I like to repair it... knowing that "repairing" stuff usually means "making it worse" so I said "No". But just as a test, I clicked off the inbox then back on the inbox, and there's the message again: "would I like to fix such and such?". Realizing that from now on, I'd get that STUPID message every time I clicked the inbox; I might as well let it do whatever it is so convinced it needs to do.

Well the "repair" process took all of 2 seconds. I saw on the bottom right that ~350 messages had been repaired. I thought "great! it only took 2 seconds, it couldn't have done something completely moronic in that amount of time"... but I was wrong. My inbox is now empty. The trash can is empty. There are no new folders that I can see. They're just gone. THANKS A F@#KING LOT RITLABS!


I've been regretting buying this stupid program from the beginning... it's my own fault though; I used the full trial period without noticing all the idiot-syncricities ritlabs programmem into this POS.

For instance, when you download your mail you MUST click on at least one in order to delete anything. So, if you get 10 messages, and they all have viruses, you would HAVE to click on (AKA open) at least one virus laiden message in order to delete the rest.

Here's another, it treats the "Trash" folder the same as every other folder, including confirming every time you choose to empty it. What's wrong with this? Well, it makes it rutine to click the "OK" button the instant the confirmation dialog pops up. I'm glad I never accidently selected to empty my sent mail folder instead of the trash, because I'm sure I would have clicked the confirmation instantly just like I have hundreds of times EVERY TIME I wanted to empty my trash...

Anyway, screw TheBat! ! Screw RITLABS!

Oh yeah, I don't know what they're doing over there, but I only know of one (1) update to TheBat since I bought it about a year and a half ago...

[kimmchii]

i am sorry to hear that. have you scanned the partition with an undelete program? you might be able to recover the mails.

[Jibz]

Sorry to hear you lost your messages .

For instance, when you download your mail you MUST click on at least one in order to delete anything. So, if you get 10 messages, and they all have viruses, you would HAVE to click on (AKA open) at least one virus laiden message in order to delete the rest.

-Hirudin

That's because Message Auto-view is turned on. You can turn that off in the View menu, or with Shift-Ctrl-E. After all, it's hard to delete something without selecting what to delete.

[f0dder]

Nasty :/

It's one of those bugs that usually won't be found and fixed before something like this happens, though >_<

For instance, when you download your mail you MUST click on at least one in order to delete anything. So, if you get 10 messages, and they all have viruses, you would HAVE to click on (AKA open) at least one virus laiden message in order to delete the rest.

To be fair, TheBat isn't vulnerable. Even if you have HTML mails turned on, since it uses it's own HTML rendering engine.

[allen]

That really sucks, man -- and I'm really sorry to hear it happened.

That said, and with no offense intended, why are the developers more responsible for being prepared for an over-full disk on your machine than you?  One could argue they should prepare for every possible scenerio -- but, honestly, who can truly live up to that?  One could argue they should have considered the possibility of a filled hard drive -- but the same could be argued for you

Again, I don't mean any offense toward you -- but with years of experience with it under my belt, I believe TB! to be a solid e-mail client that goes well above and beyond other clients on the market in terms of features, usability and security.

Where security is concerned, if you're really paranoid you could (a) disable autopreview and (b) disable rich text (view as text only) -- would would eliminate virtually any possible threat that may be posed by simply clicking an e-mail.  But even with both those features enabled, you're not really in harms way.  Unlike many other clients, TB does -not- render using IE's engine, it uses its own built in html viewer which is quite simple/rudimentary and incapable of executing any sort of malicious code.  To inflict your system with a virus, you'd need not only open the message--you'd have to open the attachment and then override the standard popup warning TB issues any time you try to open an attachment rather than save it.

That out of the way, again I'm sorry this happened -- I can imagine the trauma of it, as I've lost considerable mail bases myself in the past.  Maybe with or without a hard drive scaper the messages can be restored somehow -- one can hope, anyway.

[Carol Haynes]

Surely any software that writes to a disk should check to see if the disk has space and not destroy your data if there is no space left. That isn't exactly 'catering for any eventuality' but in many cases an inevitability!

I just filled a partition where my music collection was stored but iTunes didn't collapse under the pressure when it tried to download a podcast that wouldn't fit. My library was left in tact and the podcast was left to wait until I had some space to put it - which seems sensible behaviour.

Sorry to hear about your loss Hirudin - but can I tactfully suggest reglar backups of important data 

[mouser]

Surely any software that writes to a disk should check to see if the disk has space and not destroy your data if there is no space left. That isn't exactly 'catering for any eventuality' but in many cases an inevitability!

I agree with carol here, an email program is like a security program - it MUST plan for just situations as inevitabilities and insure no loss of email.

However i believe i have had this disk full situation happen to me and thebat not only handled it properly but knew not to consider mail it tried to retrieve and store as retrieved from the server (i think i'm remembering this correctly).

So i wonder if hirudin is sure about the cause of the corruption?  I've never lost a single email to thebat in 8 years or so and i consider this one of my #1 reasons for continuing to use it.

Have you checked the folders on your disk where the email account data is stored and done a file contents search for the emails that have gone missing - maybe they got misfiled somehow (or else check recycle bin etc.).

I feel for your loss Hirudin - if that happened to me i would be well beyond furious - i would be in a full blown shouting and throwing things rage for days.

[f0dder]

Carol, that scenario doesn't necessarily test the robustness of iTunes... I'd guess it stores a database of your music collection somewhere, probably in %USERPROFILE% somewhere. You'd have to fill up *that* partition and try again

That said, programs really ought to save files "safely". Using a decent ACID database, or "save-to-tempfile-then-rename-tempfile-when-saved-properly" scheme, so a failed save will not destroy the old saved file (something that's not in fSekrit yet, but is a high priority for v1.3).

[Carol Haynes]

Actually by default iTunes stores two copies of its library data in the My Documents\My Music\iTunes folder (along with the MP3 files etc.) - one in an internal format and the other in XML format. If one is damaged the other is automatically rebuilt. It did respond to the disk filling up in an appropriate way - it even gave a warning.

[Hirudin]

I tried the Ctrl + Shift + E thing, it solves the problem, but makes TB a lot less useful. The problem isn't selecting e-mail (Ctrl+A will select all the e-mails, but hitting delete will not work. Message > Delete from the toolbar also stays greyed out. Only after actually *clicking* an e-mail will you be able to delete anything. I'm not terribly paranoid about viruses, but I'm not a fan of spam. One way to avoid spam is to never download the images sent in spam, as they're supposidly tracked (if the image "149874345232.jpg" is downloaded then "[email protected]" is a valid e-mail).

I chose to encrypt my e-mail during the install, so I don't think searching my HDD is going to help... I really should try to do a file recovery, I shouldn't have to though... It's going to be really fun sorting through folders with names like "59BE1E79.0FD".

To me, the problem is two-fold. 1. It didn't alert me when my hard drive was too full (or I somehow missed it the error, which I'm willing to admit is possible). and 2. The "fix" caused more/worse problems. At the very least I had the titles of the messages, even if I couldn't open them I'd have some idea of what was there. Now I have a blank space looking back at me. It's just like... There, we've "fixed" your e-mail... by deleting it all! See, no errors; you're welcome. Maybe in 5 more months we'll release an update to fix this bug...

[f0dder]

but I'm not a fan of spam. One way to avoid spam is to never download the images sent in spam, as they're supposidly tracked (if the image "149874345232.jpg" is downloaded then "[email protected]" is a valid e-mail).

I've disabled html formatted mails and images, so that won't bite me... but it could be annoying if you rely on html mails.

Bug sucks anyway, sorry that you lost your messages :/

[mouser]

this might be a good general lesson:
Whenever a program/website/hard disk/registry offers to "automatically fix" a problem, a HUGE FLASHING WARNING light should go off in your brain.  These autorepair features are very often causing more harm than they fix.  Better to 100% fully investigate and backup your stuff before you proceed.

(this is of course in on way meant to excuse thebat; losing emails is unacceptable for an email client, there is just no way around it).

[Hirudin]

Welp, I just went through all the files I was able to recover... no dice...

Thanks for the help y'all...

[Carol Haynes]

but I'm not a fan of spam. One way to avoid spam is to never download the images sent in spam, as they're supposidly tracked (if the image "149874345232.jpg" is downloaded then "[email protected]" is a valid e-mail).

I've disabled html formatted mails and images, so that won't bite me... but it could be annoying if you rely on html mails.

Bug sucks anyway, sorry that you lost your messages :/

-f0dder (September 14, 2006, 06:22 AM)

I am a big fan of Firetrust Benign for that reason. It sits between the internet and the mail client and filters out web bugs such as 1 pixel images with call home links etc.  You can fully customise what you let through the filtering system.

My only gripe is that it doesn't store a copy of the original pre-processed mail but you can always use the 'leave a copy on the server for n days' to be able to retrieve something that is trashed beyond readability.

I also use Yahoo mail (my ISP proveds a full account for that) which has a useful feature in its spam filtering - if a message is in the junk folder you can opt to preview it without images. I have this set a as permanent setting so that if I check via the web page and I am not sure if an email is spam I copy it to the Junk folder and open it there and then move it back to the inbox. If it is spam I report it as spam without opening it in the inbox at all.

[urlwolf]

http://home.datapart...reviews/nextgen-mua/
Here is a good comparison of email programs. I really think M2 has features not found in any other app.

[zridling]

Don't laugh, but if you want to use a Gmail address (or several) to store your backup email cache, let me know. I think its storage is up to 3G now and I have lots of invitations left. Email me at [email protected] — or anyone for that matter.