Bitcoin Forum

What would people here suggest to me for making backups.


When making backups should I:

A)

Make 2 USB copies of the entire "Roaming/Bitcoin" folder and keep them in a safe spot.


B)

Make 2 USB copies of only the "wallet.dat" folder and keep them in a safe spot.




Can i put all my trust on only the "wallet.dat" file?  How do people usually make usb copies

I picked 2 usb copies because 1 usb might fail.

You only need the wallet.dat file. The wallet.dat file contains the private keys, and the private keys are what you need to spend the Bitcoin. The rest of the data that it uses from the blockchain can be downloaded later as it is all public. The roaming/Bitcoin folder contains the blockchain as well, but that is not necessary in a backup.

oh i see!    i get it now..


i just transferred the wallet.dat file into my laptop to test, and which already has the block chain downloaded,  and volia!!  

it shows my bitcoins,  that's great, i will just keep copies of the wallet.dat file,


awesome! i'm starting to get the hang out it now,


one last thing i need to test,   i would like send you some bitcoins from my laptop,   this way i can test to see if it asks me for the passphrase and if my passphrase is correct.


I will send it to this address in 10 minutes:  16mT7jrpkjnJBD7a3TM2awyxHub58H6r6Z  (which i found on your profile)


Please let me know if you receive it so i know it works!   You can take it as a donation for your help.


After that, i feel i am confident with bitcoin, and can start buying more bitcoins and buying things online!

Thanks!

Keeping that file safe is key.  Do not store it online, on a computer harddrive.  Put it on thumbdrive or something offline.  And have a copy.

Also having the private key is a good thing.  You can make a paper wallet and with private key you can pretty much import it into any wallet out there, which is nice.

The main source is that wallet.dat file which contains the sensitive information.
Secondly try to have many backups because it can save your life maybe.
When mentioning USBs try to use 2 different USB from different brands to be safe enough.

i would backup both, the wallet.dat and the entire walelt for a faster synching, but you need a good usb for that because they are around 53 giga, so something like a 128 usb 3.0 usb will do it

i would recommend the sandisk cruzer etreme when you ahve the money for it

There is absolutely no idea to store the whole blockchain in cold wallet. Why would you do so? It is anyway cold wallet, so you probably wont be spending coins from it that often. Even if you would backup the whole blockchain as of now, it would need to download rest of it when you check your wallet again in lets say half a year. It would still take very long time then too.

Wisest is to simply save your private keys. You can always download lite wallet which downloads only index of the blockchain when you need to use them.

do a simple ccopy of 3 times to 3 different parts and locate them at 3 different spots  ;D
Thats the safest in my mind so far  :D anyways the passwords should be keepn at the savest spot. Your Car ;) Just a Joke  ;D

regards
DavieT1337

Instead, just write down you BTC address and its private key or copy & paste your private key and save it with a strong password of upto 20 letters/symbols and store that file in your USB. I'm doing this.

I compress the wallet.dat file with 7 zip using encryption, then back up the files into usb disk. Is 7 zip encryption safe?

The more the merrier, but literally! If you can, make 3 USB copies and copy everything, folder and wallet.dat files.

Also make sure that your computer is clean and virus free and your USBs as well!

because i would cut a good poriton of the syncing process the next time i need to reinstall everything again, and i don't trust at all the source that you may find online

I would just go for a HD Wallet and store the words safely. That way its much safer since you can recover every address you ever make after that, instead of the pre-gen'd limit in normal wallets.


Not as much, but if you run it with the proper AES encryption, it should be strong enough. Just make sure you don't mistake common passworded archive with encrypted.

Well, I use save my private keys in a password manager like KeePass and save it with a password. Then I export the storage file and save it on a stick or even at an end-to-end encrypted cloud provider.

Are you saying you keep your backup on the "cloud'?  Even encrypted... I would NEVER store online.  Just a bad spot if that is what you mean.

Look into offline options.  It's much better offline then cloud will ever be.

Having a wallet, like Multibit HD automatically save an encrypted copy of your wallet to a cloud is actually good security, since you have very high redundancy and you also have your words to recover your wallet. (Recommended by the devs)

And of course, your wallet is completely uncrackable, as long as bitcoin itself remain so.

The problem here is the way the previous user recommend doing it. That would be a very bad way to do it.

AFAIK, 7zip, WinRar, WinZip, etc. have all been cracked already. But as long as the wallet.dat file is encrypted you should be good.

No, 7zip's encryption is not cracked. I highly doubt WinRar and WinZip's are cracked either, but I don't use them. 7zip uses AES encryption, which is still not cracked. It is the safest encryption method as of today.

Just read into it. Apparently both have changed (a few years ago they were all cracked -- AES wasn't added until 7zip 3.x).

Keep them "cold" have on a few thumbdrives or sd cards or something that is not online.  You cannot crack what you cannot get to.  This is for wallets with sizable amounts.

If it's for low spending yes this is overkill.  But the part about being offline is very important if storing lots of coins.

you could even extract the private keys and save them via keepass2 on a truecrypted usb stick. I consider this pretty secure.

Does it mean 7Zip 9.xx is not crackable? 7Zip has several compression method with difference compression ratio. Are they all not crackable?

Compression and encryption are different things. Compression does not encrypt anything, so anyone can decompress and read the data. The encryption that 7Zip uses is AES, which is still uncracked, so yes it is uncrackable.

Don't forget to make copies of your private keys.  You can find it in "Tools -> Export private keys -> Epoxrt to (select file) -> Export private key". If you want you can password protect the key.

If the wallet.dat file is corrupted you could still import private keys.

To add on, the only time you WOULDN'T want to pass protect the private key is if you're writing it down and need to read it.