[Evolution] cron job to backup old mail

[Jason Cooper <evolution lakedaemon net>]

I'm attempting to get my old email under control.  I have about 450M in
an 'OldMail' folder in evolution.  It's stored in mbox format.  

If I tar up the entire 'OldMail' directory which includes this list:

total 427933
-rw-r--r--  1 jcooper users        86 Oct 10  2003 folder-metadata.xml
-rw-------  1 jcooper users        95 Aug 18 12:51 local-metadata.xml
-rw-------  1 jcooper users 434518823 Aug 19 15:24 mbox
-rw-------  1 jcooper users    762091 Aug 19 15:24 mbox.ev-summary
-rw-------  1 jcooper users    928768 Aug 19 15:24 mbox.ibex.index
-rw-------  1 jcooper users   1550676 Aug 19 15:24 mbox.ibex.index.data

Can I just remove it?  Will evolution barf on it disappearing?  Also,
later down the road, if I copied it back into place, would evolution
recognize it correctly?

I guess the point I'm really trying to get at is this.  Does evolution
rely solely on the contents of this directory to tell it what mail is
there?

Usually I would just experiment, but this data is too critical. :(

tia,

Cooper.