You said "I need to find a solution to guard against data loss for the Mac email files"
I'm assuming the users are using Entourage (mac versiom of Outlook in Office). If so you can set up some new rules in Entourage. Let's say : Click Rules/New Rule. Execute - if any criteria are met Apply to All messages.
Add Action - Copy message. To - Choose folder.
At that point you have quite a few options. If the user's share is permantly mounted on their desktop you can select the share or subfolder as the Copy to destination. You can then set up a new schedule in Entouraage to run the new rule. If the people leave Entourage permantly on, it would probably be best to set a timed schedule. If they don't leave it on, you could set the scedule for on launch, on quit, etc.
If their share is not always mounted, you could at least put a new folder on their computer where Entourage would copy the mesages to so they have another copy - named something like Mail backup. you could also buy some outboard firewire drives so these peoplw would have backup for all their work - just not mail. We use drive for OWComputing.com for all our machines. These also come with a backup program.
You could also try recording a simple Applescript if the people are not permanently connected to the server. Launch the Applescript application and click Start Recording. Click somewhere on teh desktop to go to Finder. On the Macs Go menu click connect to Server so as to connect to therir share. Clcik on the Applscript icon on the doc to get you back to Applescript and hit Stop recording. Test and compile if it works. I haven't played with Applescript since about OS8 so I don't know if this way of recording scripts still works. If it does name and save the script.
Go back to entourage and RULES. One of the options is Run Applescript. You would put that action BEFORE the Copy to folder that I mentioned earlier. You would then set eh schedule for Entourage to run the script connecting to server and copying the emails to the appropriate folder.
Lastly, there are alot of backup apps available. Here's a link to to the Versiontracker.com page for mac backup apps.
Retrospect is the oldest and most accepted but you'll find others there.
By the way, I'm one of those graphics people. We always curse the admins who set up the limits on the mail boxes. If you're sending someone a 40 MB prepress quality pdf, it doesn't take long to fill that box.
Using OSX 10.3.8 on a G4
