Been digging through the forums and the wiki but havent' been able to find any specific answer on the subject.
I'm running a couple of bitcoin miners, one is a dedicated server. The hard drive on the server is encrypted, and as well I make offline backups of my wallet (again, encrypted). The question I have is say someone hacks into my server and steals my wallet, however I have a backup that I made a day or two before the wallet was stolen.
What happens if I restore my wallet file even though the more current wallet file has been stolen? Will I retain the balance I had at the time of the back up or will the newer file supercede the odler file due to the newer block or hash signatures?
If the wallet on the server has private keys that weren't in your backup, then yes.
When you backup, just run the client, download the blockchain, close the client, replace wallet.dat, and immediately transfer all your coins to new addresses.