"Digital Backup" vs. "Paper backup"

[meefozio]

Does a digital backup contain the same information as a paper backup? 

Put another way: If I make a thousand offline transactions with a thousand new addresses and later lose my computers to a house fire, will I be able to access all of my funds via a digital backup, or can this only be accomplished via the paper backup?

Furthermore, if the digital backup and the paper backup are both capable of recovering all of my funds, why does my watching-only wallet give me the option to do a digital backup but not a paper backup?

Thanks!

[mokahless]

Not quite sure what you mean by all that but it's the same thing. For a digital backup you could export all the private keys and put em in a text file on a usb key and it would be the same as a paper backup but on a usb key. Or you could just put the whole wallet.dat there. Or you could email an encypted wallet.dat to yourself.

You can recover as long as you have the private keys in some form.

[etotheipi]

A digital backup is a copy of your wallet file.  If your wallet is encrypted, so is your backup.  If your wallet is watching-only, so is your wallet.    If you have a digital backup and you haven't forgotten your encryption password, it's like a paper backup.

More about it, here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152151.0

[meefozio]

Ok.  So, is it accurate to say that a "Digital Backup" of my normal, encrypted wallet from my offline computer will contain the deterministic seed?

[etotheipi]

Ok.  So, is it accurate to say that a "Digital Backup" of my normal, encrypted wallet from my offline computer will contain the deterministic seed?

The digital backup does contain the deterministic seed.  But it's encrypted.  Which means it's 100% useless if you forget your passphrase or you get hit by a bus and your family would like to recover your fortune.  If you've ever forgotten a password, either write it down with the backup, or make a paper backup.  So far, I haven't observed anyone lose coins with Armory except for two reasons:  (1) Forgotten passphrase (80%), (2) Failed harddrive (20%).  All of it would've been avoided with a paper backup.

[meefozio]

Excellent - thanks for clearing that up for me, etotheipi.  Consider me a regular Armory donor now

Oh and I guess I should have stated earlier that I am doing both paper and digital backups, heh.