If my hard drive crashes...

[RedHoops]

...and to show how much I don't know about computers, how is a bit coin wallet retrievable in the event of a hard drive melt down?

[Tirapon]

Make a backup of your wallet.dat. You can find where its located using google.

[Tirapon]

Or just follow this link:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory

[phatsphere]

if it is really molten, no chance. otherwise it depends if it still runs and just the filesystem is broken (easier case) or the chips/heads are broken. in any case, there are companies dealing with that. depends on how much they cost vs. the value of the lost bitcoins.

[Gabi]

Better you backuped your wallet, otherwise our coins will just suddenly be a bit more valuable 

[franky1]

get a copy of your private keys and store them separately aswell.

that way you have paper back up, digital backup aswell as the live wallet being used

[grue]

if you have it encrypted, just have it backed up at a cloud storage service (like dropbox)

[namecoinwallet]

Back up everything in advance.

[556j]

Copy your wallet.dat, encrypt the wallet with truecrypt, then email yourself the encrypted file to your gmail acount and a waala cloud storage account.

[Icon]

Copy your wallet.dat, encrypt the wallet with truecrypt, then email yourself the encrypted file to your gmail acount and a waala cloud storage account.

+1

[RedHoops]

Thank you all for the help. I appreciate it.