Cold Storage Wallets

[t1000]

Backup to a floppy.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha 

[hankhill69]

Backup to a floppy.

It would be a challenge in itself to find a floppy drive at this point in time.

[Andaloons]

There is an important lesson here.  Backing up to obsolete hardware is pretty secure, but possibly too secure.  What if your only floppy drive fails?  Where would you buy another one?  What if USB sticks become obsolete?  Don't backup your wallets on some kind of technology and forget about it.  Offline printed paper wallets are the best cold storage way to go.   

[theecoinomist]

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?

Wuala.com or Mega with encrypted version as well

[vapourminer]

wallets add new addresses every so often. make sure you backup the working wallet as time goes on, as you may find you old backup wont have currently used addresses in it.

[t1000]

There is an important lesson here.  Backing up to obsolete hardware is pretty secure, but possibly too secure.  What if your only floppy drive fails?  Where would you buy another one?  What if USB sticks become obsolete?  Don't backup your wallets on some kind of technology and forget about it.  Offline printed paper wallets are the best cold storage way to go.   

I am starting to understand why John Titor came back for an IBM 5100. He/his government must have put their backup on tape. The loss of access to the bitcoin reserve must have led to civil war.

[t1000]

wallets add new addresses every so often. make sure you backup the working wallet as time goes on, as you may find you old backup wont have currently used addresses in it.

There is some leeway to this. Bitcoin full node client wallets have a keypool. Default is 100 keys. This means it has the next 100 addresses already generated.

[bitpop]

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

Please don't tell anyone

[kellrobinson]

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

The bitcoins are not in your wallet.  They are on the blockchain, which is stored on thousands of computers worldwide (miners). Your wallet contains the information (keys) you need to go on the blockchain and get those coins back.

[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

The bitcoins are not in your wallet.  They are on the blockchain, which is stored on thousands of computers worldwide (miners). Your wallet contains the information (keys) you need to go on the blockchain and get those coins back.

Perfectly made sense, thank you very much.