[SlowToady]

OS10.5 seems to have a glaring bug in the directory copy code for the Finder. If you're coping form one device to another (say, internal HD to external HD) and one device becomes unavailable for some reason (accidentally unplugged, for instance) Bad Things(tm) happen and you loose all your data.

Shaun, you could copy the older messages to another directory, tarball them so you have em, and keep only the recent ones in programs db. Make it a bit faster. OutLook has this automated, called "Auto Archive." Might want to check if your OSX mail program has anything like that, otherwise you can do it manually.