Old offline wallet.dat files

[noedaRDH]

I've created a few offline wallet.dat files back in summer of 2011. I've been adding coins to them (through pools) since then but I've never used them online with any bitcoin clients.

Am I safe? Am I able to access the coins later on for use? Or should I be regularly resyncing the wallets, even if I'm not spending the coins?

[Fuzzy]

I wouldn't worry about it, re-syncing the wallets won't do anything but open you up to possible theft.

All syncing does is reaffirm that your wallet balance (as your client sees it) is the same as its balance as the block chain sees it.

So if you've been sending them to the right address, they'll be there.

[Stephen Gornick]

I've created a few offline wallet.dat files back in summer of 2011. I've been adding coins to them (through pools) since then but I've never used them online with any bitcoin clients.

Am I safe? Am I able to access the coins later on for use? Or should I be regularly resyncing the wallets, even if I'm not spending the coins?

The Bitcoin client back then didn't have passphrase encryption, so that means you want to be very careful with that wallet.dat.

Some might suggest using an offline computer and bringing over a more recent Bitcoin-Qt client to do the passphrase encryption before taking that wallet.dat over to another, connected computer.   

Or to use Armory on the offline computer which provides a secure method for spending.

[noedaRDH]

I wouldn't worry about it, re-syncing the wallets won't do anything but open you up to possible theft.

All syncing does is reaffirm that your wallet balance (as your client sees it) is the same as its balance as the block chain sees it.

So if you've been sending them to the right address, they'll be there.

Alright thanks. I guess I won't need to touch those wallets, ever, until I want to send the coins away.

[noedaRDH]

I've created a few offline wallet.dat files back in summer of 2011. I've been adding coins to them (through pools) since then but I've never used them online with any bitcoin clients.

Am I safe? Am I able to access the coins later on for use? Or should I be regularly resyncing the wallets, even if I'm not spending the coins?

The Bitcoin client back then didn't have passphrase encryption, so that means you want to be very careful with that wallet.dat.

Some might suggest using an offline computer and bringing over a more recent Bitcoin-Qt client to do the passphrase encryption before taking that wallet.dat over to another, connected computer.   

Or to use Armory on the offline computer which provides a secure method for spending.

Yeah I'll encrypt the wallet on an old laptop prior to bringing the files onto a computer with live internet access.