Floppy disks viable for wallet.dat storage?

[infested999]

Every major storage medium has a flaw in it.

• Hard Drives are known to fail randomly. Also it would be ridiculous to have a 1TB hard drive for only 1MB of data.
• Flash Drives are a nightmare when it comes to reliability.
• CD-Roms are known to "melt" over time, after ~10 years they might fail. Also inefficient to have a 700MB CD for just 1 file.
• Paper wallets are perfect, but many power users don't have a printer since it is becoming an outdated device. Also some printers may "save" the data printed making it unsafe.
  

What are the flaws with floppy disks and how do they compare with other storage mediums? Price is not a factor really since you can usually find some disks and you can get the drives for $1. I would enjoy using them because they feel more firm rather than paper or a cheap plastic flash drive.

[RaTTuS]

floppy flaws ....
I don't have any machines that has then or an interface
they are not really floppy any more
they suffer badly from magnets

[empoweoqwj]

Every major storage medium has a flaw in it.

• Hard Drives are known to fail randomly. Also it would be ridiculous to have a 1TB hard drive for only 1MB of data.
• Flash Drives are a nightmare when it comes to reliability.
• CD-Roms are known to "melt" over time, after ~10 years they might fail. Also inefficient to have a 700MB CD for just 1 file.
• Paper wallets are perfect, but many power users don't have a printer since it is becoming an outdated device. Also some printers may "save" the data printed making it unsafe.
  

What are the flaws with floppy disks and how do they compare with other storage mediums? Price is not a factor really since you can usually find some disks and you can get the drives for $1. I would enjoy using them because they feel more firm rather than paper or a cheap plastic flash drive.

You've obviously never used a floppy disk before ...... the major flaw is they are way less reliable than modern storage methods. We used to ship games on floppies, and every fifth game would come back because the data couldn't be read.

I've used flash drives extensively for 5 years and never had a corruption. Stick to flash drives. 2 in separate locations.

[Rannasha]

Using a technology that is already outdated for long term storage seems contradictory.

Flash drives and/or memory cards are your best bet, I think. Never had any of those fail on me before (in contrast with harddisks, floppy disks, CDs, etc...)

[empoweoqwj]

And of course floppies really stopped at 1.4MB I think, though there might have been one double that.

My wallet is 4MB, the thought of storing that on 3 floppies would stop me sleeping any nights!

[Trongersoll]

my dog chewed up the floppys with my vacation pictures on them

[jackjack]

my dog chewed up the floppys with my vacation pictures on them

One picture per floppy?

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Didn't Google use some kind of tape to store their data, even today in 2013?

[spiccioli]

Someone a few days ago in a different thread suggested m-discs as a long term storage solution.


spiccioli
 

[grue]

Didn't Google use some kind of tape to store their data, even today in 2013?

Those are tape drives, which are great for backups. But they are impractical to use because tape readers are rare. They are also subject to the same problem as VHS tapes: they deteriorate over time.

Every major storage medium has a flaw in it.


Hard Drives are known to fail randomly. Also it would be ridiculous to have a 1TB hard drive for only 1MB of data.[/li][/list]

No they don't. They only seem to fail randomly because of confirmation bias (vocal minority crying they lost their data).

Flash Drives are a nightmare when it comes to reliability.

only if you buy some shitty chinese 8 GB flash drive for $4.

CD-Roms are known to "melt" over time, after ~10 years they might fail. Also inefficient to have a 700MB CD for just 1 file.

10 years is pretty damn good

Paper wallets are perfect, but many power users don't have a printer since it is becoming an outdated device. Also some printers may "save" the data printed making it unsafe.

wait what? why wouldn't you have a printer? you can get a back and white laser printer for under $100.

[ArticMine]

I use floppy disks both the 3.5in (1.44 MB) and the even older 5.25in (1.2MB) as part of my wallet.dat backup procedures. The typical wallet.dat size of a few hundred KB is actually at the floppy disks sweet spot. The one big advantage is that the technology is obsolescent. In short they can be read but it would take some time to get all the parts and configure the drives etc for an attacker.  This is especially true of the older 5.25in floppies. This gives the owner of the bitcoins time to empty the wallet if the floppy is stolen or otherwise compromised making the 5.25in floppy in particular ideal for backing up an unencrypted wallet, private keys, decryption passwords etc.

Some things to keep in mind when working with floppy disks.
1) The drives are slow so be patient. Ejecting the floppy before it has finished reading / writing is one of the most common reasons for floppy disk and drive failure.
2) Keep the diskettes away from magnetic fields. A common source is unshielded speakers. For example the floppy is placed in a purse and the purse is placed next to a speaker in a car.
3) The older drives from the 1980's and early 1990's are best since they were built for quality.
4) With proper care they can hold data for decades. I have floppy disks over 20 years old that are perfectly readable today.  

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Didn't Google use some kind of tape to store their data, even today in 2013?

Those are tape drives, which are great for backups. But they are unsuitable for anything else because they have insane seektimes

Well I am pretty sure it will be worth the wait considering the data will be just 30-40 bytes for a single key and not a lot more for 100 or 1000.

[grue]

Why don't you backup your wallet in the cloud? just upload an encrypted copy to several cloud storage sites.

Didn't Google use some kind of tape to store their data, even today in 2013?

Those are tape drives, which are great for backups. But they are unsuitable for anything else because they have insane seektimes

Well I am pretty sure it will be worth the wait considering the data will be just 30-40 bytes for a single key and not a lot more for 100 or 1000.

Too bad no one has tape drives.

[Trongersoll]

Too bad no one has tape drives.

um.. i have at least one in an old 486 machine. i really can't see using them for anything. that machine hasn't been run since the first pentiums came out.

[someguy123]

Didn't Google use some kind of tape to store their data, even today in 2013?

Those are tape drives, which are great for backups. But they are impractical to use because tape readers are rare. They are also subject to the same problem as VHS tapes: they deteriorate over time.

Tape drives aren't that rare. Many businesses store data on tape because they're actually quite reliable. Unlike hard drives they don't have moving parts, plus they're EXTREMELY cheap. You can get a 1.6 terabyte tape for £15 over here:
http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/products/sony-lto-ultrium-4-1-6tb-data-cart-4KNR.html?refs=56270000

Although, tapes are restricted to mostly businesses, because the tape machines are really damn expensive.

Floppies are one of the worst possible mediums for your wallet though, back on my old laptop, I had floppies that would gain bad sectors within a few days of writing something to them. They're highly volatile to data destruction just from normal use; plus floppy drives are uncommon now, my current PC doesn't even have a CD drive ( I usually use flash media for installing an operating system, and all my games come from services such as Origin and Steam. )

[ArticMine]

Didn't Google use some kind of tape to store their data, even today in 2013?

Those are tape drives, which are great for backups. But they are impractical to use because tape readers are rare. They are also subject to the same problem as VHS tapes: they deteriorate over time.

Tape drives aren't that rare. Many businesses store data on tape because they're actually quite reliable. Unlike hard drives they don't have moving parts, plus they're EXTREMELY cheap. You can get a 1.6 terabyte tape for £15 over here:
http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/products/sony-lto-ultrium-4-1-6tb-data-cart-4KNR.html?refs=56270000

Although, tapes are restricted to mostly businesses, because the tape machines are really damn expensive.

Floppies are one of the worst possible mediums for your wallet though, back on my old laptop, I had floppies that would gain bad sectors within a few days of writing something to them. They're highly volatile to data destruction just from normal use; plus floppy drives are uncommon now, my current PC doesn't even have a CD drive ( I usually use flash media for installing an operating system, and all my games come from services such as Origin and Steam. )

I would suspect a defective floppy drive on the laptop.

[Jbanna]

Perhaps think about backing it up on dropbox. As everyone has said, floppys are extremely inconsistent and offer no advantage.

[infested999]

Every major storage medium has a flaw in it.


Hard Drives are known to fail randomly. Also it would be ridiculous to have a 1TB hard drive for only 1MB of data.[/li][/list]

No they don't. They only seem to fail randomly because of confirmation bias (vocal minority crying they lost their data)

You just said they fail randomly!

Flash Drives are a nightmare when it comes to reliability.

only if you buy some shitty chinese 8 GB flash drive for $4.

Sandisk Cruzer Pop 8GB failed on me 1 week after I bought it.

Paper wallets are perfect, but many power users don't have a printer since it is becoming an outdated device. Also some printers may "save" the data printed making it unsafe.

wait what? why wouldn't you have a printer? you can get a back and white laser printer for under $100.

InkJet printers are awful because you either print every day or your ink dries up. Having a LaserJet printer in your house causes lung cancer.

[gglon]

If you want to be safe I suggest to multiplicate wallet.dat file into many copies to fill the mass storage (m-disc) to the limit. Then even if say >90% (depends on the storage size and luck) is corrupted, it's still possible to recover data.

If you prefer to have one solid copy use this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpOV6r2vy9Y
though I don't know if the 'printer' stores anything in the memory.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Of everything mentioned in the thread floppy disks are probably the worst for achrival.

Tape, mDisc, and specifically designed archival CD-ROM are probably your best bet along with plain old paper.
As gglon pointed out above storing the file it makes sense to store it redundantly.  There are a couple of different methods.

Lastly you really should have more than one copy as anything no matter how well designed can fail.  Take a wallet.dat expand it to say 5,000 key keypool put one copy on a mDisc, one copy encrypted in the cloud, and a printout of private keys on paper and with proper storage I would be confident it can be recovered in 10-30 years.