Thanks for the replies so far.
I'm unable to export my in box email messages and sent email messages to my external HDD from Freecom!
CSV export of contacts was no problem.
What;s going on here?
You don't say what your email program is as it is possible to back-up your emails to a different location and then go into your email program and remove the older ones.
You say you can't export your inbox, that begs the question do you not have some sort of folder structure within your email program ?
Storing everything in the inbox leaves them at risk of loss, this is usually as a result of file corruption. This can happen if the inbox is open (most likely) and you have a system crash, files that are open are at risk of corruption. You should have a structure of folders that relate to the content of the emails and the only thing in the in-box would be recent emails that you haven't read and subsequently moved to the folder related to its content.
These folders would then be a different and once you know where your email program stores the emails it is possible to back them up. See image extract of my current backup folder showing the thunderbird emails having been backed up. Note the ZZ_Archive folder as periodically I move older emails to this folder so as to keep the active folders smaller.
So it is possible, but you need to get organised, but in all honesty a hard drive upgrade cloning the old hard drive over to it would be the way to go as if you get to less than 15% the windows defrag won't run either.
EDIT: forgot to include image attachment.