Wallet security/redundancy. The FAQ, it does nothing!

[MacFall]

The FAQ seems to assume a bit too much technical knowledge on the part of the reader. I haven't been able to find answers to the following two three questions:

1. When backing up one's wallet, is it enough to copy the DAT file and put it in a different location?

2. How does one make a secure address? I read in the FAQ that I should generate it from a new wallet, but I don't know how to create a new wallet without installing and running an entirely new instance of bitcoin from within my encrypted volume/USB drive/partition/whatever.

EDIT: 3. If bitcoin creates a new wallet every time it is restarted, how does one access old addresses? This seems like it ought to have an obvious answer, but as it's been explained to me so far it seems as if restarting bitcoin sort of "disconnects" any previously used address.

[Dude65535]

1. the wallet.dat file is all that needs to be backed up. As you create new addresses you will want to replace your backup copies. The wallet file generates some addresses ahead of time (starting as soon as you generate your second address) but if you run through those and start using addresses not in the old file you could lose the bitcoins sent to those addresses.

2. If you move the wallet.dat file somewhere else bitcoin will create a new one when it does not find the old one.

3. It only creates a new wallet.dat if it can not find the old one.

[MacFall]

Thanks, but in regards to number 3 - what if it can't find the old one? How would I access the bitcoins stored in the old one after that, unless I keep a separately installed bitcoin program with each wallet.

[Calavera]

At the moment I'm pretty sure you'd have to swap in and out the .dat files depending on which wallet you wanted to access. In the future there will be tools for combining wallets or shifting around addresses etc. 

[MacFall]

Ok, thanks! That's what I needed to know. We really need a "bitcoin for total n00bs" guide for stuff like this.