Cold Storage Wallets

[hankhill69]

Hello Everyone,

I have a 500gb external hard drive, i would like to use this hard drive to store multiple wallets on for different alternative coins, is this possible? if so what all would i need to do to get this going?

[robincj91]

Look into 'Truecrypt', it basically allows you to encrypt an allocated partition on the drive, so that if anyone gets hold of the drive, they can't access anything store in said partition (in this case your .dat files) without the password.

Then you just need to backup all your alternative Wallet.dat files to the harddrive. Whether you wish to use a seperate partition for each currency each with a different password is upto you (more secure ofcourse.)

Truecrypt isn't too difficult to set up, just takes 5 minutes of reading the instructions! Good luck!

[Voodah]

Do it on a SSD drive.

[hankhill69]

thank you for your quick replies

[hilariousandco]

Hello Everyone,

I have a 500gb external hard drive, i would like to use this hard drive to store multiple wallets on for different alternative coins, is this possible? if so what all would i need to do to get this going?

Back the wallets up on multiple sources: USB sticks, CDs etc. You can also copy the private keys down as well.

[Lala]

Even a 512MB usb stick would be enough. Go to the shops, buy about 3+ cheap USB sticks they are around $4 ea you can find them, and store them all on there, so if one is broken or lost you have more. Enjoy your day.

[hankhill69]

I have alot of research to do guys/girls...thank you for your very fast responses

[Voodah]

I have alot of research to do guys/girls...thank you for your very fast responses

Indeed. Do not rush into it. Think about your options well and always consider redundancy.

[hilariousandco]

Even a 512MB usb stick would be enough. Go to the shops, buy about 3+ cheap USB sticks they are around $4 ea you can find them, and store them all on there, so if one is broken or lost you have more. Enjoy your day.

Personally I wouldn't go for really cheap USBs. You can still buy branded Sandisk ones very cheaply.

[hankhill69]

Very stupid question but doesnt creating double wallets also mean your creating duplicates of your coins? or are the coins assigned values 1-21million like a bank note has serial numbers.

thank you

[t1000]

Very stupid question but doesnt creating double wallets also mean your creating duplicates of your coins? or are the coins assigned values 1-21million like a bank note has serial numbers.

thank you

No. Bitcoins are not serial numbered.

A bitcoin is not a unit really, but rather a quantity.

Bitcoins are infinitely divisible, though for now you can consider a satoshi as the smallest unit.

There are 100 million satoshis in 1 bitcoin.

All you bitcoins are actually on the block chain. Your wallet only contains the references to your coins and the keys that let you to spend them.

So, you can make as many copies of your wallet as you want. Your bitcoins will not be duplicated.

[RawDog]

Very stupid question but doesnt creating double wallets also mean your creating duplicates of your coins? or are the coins assigned values 1-21million like a bank note has serial numbers.

I made a lot of money this way.  I just keep making copies of bitcoins and selling them to you idiots.  Bitcoin is nothing but air.  Its stupid!!

[hankhill69]

Very stupid question but doesnt creating double wallets also mean your creating duplicates of your coins? or are the coins assigned values 1-21million like a bank note has serial numbers.

I made a lot of money this way.  I just keep making copies of bitcoins and selling them to you idiots.  Bitcoin is nothing but air.  Its stupid!!

absolutely genius my goodness

[kik1977]

Very stupid question but doesnt creating double wallets also mean your creating duplicates of your coins? or are the coins assigned values 1-21million like a bank note has serial numbers.

thank you

No. Bitcoins are not serial numbered.

A bitcoin is not a unit really, but rather a quantity.

Bitcoins are infinitely divisible, though for now you can consider a satoshi as the smallest unit.

There are 100 million satoshis in 1 bitcoin.

All you bitcoins are actually on the block chain. Your wallet only contains the references to your coins and the keys that let you to spend them.

So, you can make as many copies of your wallet as you want. Your bitcoins will not be duplicated.

Exactly, in your wallet you just hold the proof you're the owner of that quantity of bitcoins and the "password" to use them. In fact what you have is a public/private key pair.

[nastybit]

You can also upload the wallet in the cloud, like dropbox or similar but make sure you use a very strong password.
Please also note that if someone ever get your wallet.dat without password he will be able to spend, he just need access to 1 copy, and you will not be able to do anything.
Best Luck :-)

[hankhill69]

ok awesome so in your opinion what is the best way I should approach my situation? i got a 500gb hard drive, put .dat file on it, make a copy of the .dat file and put it on a usb? and then keep taking that file to multiple locations...sound about right?

[IsaacGoldbourne]

Do it on a SSD drive.

Why would you use an SSD? It doesn't need the speed increase for cold storage.

I'd personally create a truecrypt container and upload it to 30 cloud storage services if its for LONG term

[t1000]

ok awesome so in your opinion what is the best way I should approach my situation? i got a 500gb hard drive, put .dat file on it, make a copy of the .dat file and put it on a usb? and then keep taking that file to multiple locations...sound about right?

If you are keeping these wallets as backups, it should be fine.

If you are looking to store your coins offline, securely, for long periods of time, I recommend you use paper wallet. Most digital storage mediums degrade over time. USB sticks have a data retention period of 10 years, typically. Hard drives in cold storage for extended periods of time may fail to start (motor failure). 

[Voodah]

Do it on a SSD drive.

Why would you use an SSD? It doesn't need the speed increase for cold storage.

I'd personally create a truecrypt container and upload it to 30 cloud storage services if its for LONG term

A regular HDD is much more fragile than an SSD.

That's all I meant.

[btcusr]

Backup to a floppy.