Question about offline storage of coins

[Raptas]

Hey,

I have a question about offline storage. Ofcourse I've Googled but I found several different results: some say you have to backup your complete wallet, some say just your wallet.dat file.

Imagine I want to store my Bitcoins on an USB (and no where else), which is then put in a vault  for a longer period of time.

Would it be enough to:
1. Copy wallet.dat file to USB drive.
2. Delete everything (wallet, .dat file etc) from my computer.
3. Store USB in the vault.

And then, when I want to get them back on my pc:

4. Install Bitcoin wallet and update.
5. Replace the default wallet.dat file with the one on my USB.

Also, if I would store the backup in my vault but keep my wallet on my pc and then send and receive coins, would I have to make a new backup?

Thanks a lot!

[PenAndPaper]

That pretty much will do the job. Also some wallets have the option to export wallet.
Just keep more than one backup and make sure your wallet is encrypted.

[mnky]

If you wanted, you could also place the .DAT file(s) in a TrueCrypt volume.  This would allow you to keep the .tc file stored in another location.

I've done that with other important data in the past.

[odolvlobo]

It is much easier to just create a paper wallet. Many wallets can do that for you. If you are using bitcoin-qt, there are several sites that can make a paper wallet for you, blockchain.info and bitaddress.org are some.

[DannyHamilton]

which is then put in a vault  for a longer period of time.

The answer to your question really depends on what you mean by "longer period of time".

What if Bitcoin-Qt software doesn't exist any more when you are ready to access the bitcoins?  What if computers no longer have USB ports?

A paper wallet is much safer.  You can always read paper, and unless the core ECDSA protocol changes, the private key that would be printed on the paper would always be usable to spend your bitcoins.