Bitcoin Forum

Does anybody do this? If so, how?

I wouldn't do it unless you payed me more in USd than I had in bitcoins ;)
Seriously dropbox has been all over the news about how lax their security is. Just yesterday I read an article on them about having issues
with users passwords.
back it up to a cheap usb stick and lock it in a safe

I think it's a good idea, just make sure it's encrypted with a decent passphrase. Truecrypt is good for that.

+1 to this guy, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet.

A 512mb usb drive is a few bucks nowadays.

I run the whole bitcoin client in a truecrypt partition of about 1GB size. This is synced to dropbox. I have no concerns about security this way.

This thread had some very good advice on backing up your wallet:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=17240.0


As others have stated, DropBox has been all over the news for their security issues. There is no way that I would consider it without first encrypting it.

The things I don't really get.
Say you have a backup of your wallet on a USB drive. If you lose that but you still have the wallet on your PC what do you do, Do you need to run to your PC as soon as poss and transfer the funds?... If you have send most of your bitcoins to a wallet you've stored somewhere offline.. How long can that wallet stay offline before the money is lost? what happens if you've encrypted that wallet and you forget the password? :)

I use truecrypt, works well, you just have to mount it everytime you run the bitcoin client. But I also have a password-protected 7z file in my dropbox, just for sure.

Yes. That's exactly what you do.

Forever. There is nothing you need to do to receive or hold bitcoins other than having the corresponding private key for the address stored somewhere safe.

Assuming you have no accessible copy of the private key(s), the coins are lost.

We're not talking about human error here, it's up to the user to remember their own password.