Multiple wallets on same system

[Portnoy]

This seems like the kinda noob question that must've been asked and answered many times already but I can't find much direct information in my searches...
the kinda question that is, or should be, in some faq for beginners somewhere.  But hopefully it is something that can be quickly answered ( or that faq pointed out ) and won't be too much of a bother.

I want to have two wallets on the same computer. I wouldn't need to be running them at the same time.

Is just running the client with the -datadir flag pointed to whatever wallet directory one wanted to access at any particular time the standard/best way of doing this?
I know this would require downloading the blockchain twice right? I don't mind that. 

Is there any issues I should be aware of in doing this?  "Be careful you don't do *this* or you will lose everything!"  kinda thing... 

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[Revalin]

You got it.  Be careful you don't randomly swap wallet.dat files in and out or your balances will display wrong.  Running with full separate data dirs works fine other than consuming a lot of disk space.

[Portnoy]

Thank you.   

[Stephen Gornick]

Is there any issues I should be aware of in doing this?  "Be careful you don't do *this* or you will lose everything!"  kinda thing... 

Just to clarify, you are describing two completely separate wallets, right?  i.e., not hoping to copy the wallet and use that for the second instance.

[Portnoy]

Is there any issues I should be aware of in doing this?  "Be careful you don't do *this* or you will lose everything!"  kinda thing... 

Just to clarify, you are describing two completely separate wallets, right?  i.e., not hoping to copy the wallet and use that for the second instance.

Yes, the one with most of my btc will be in a truecrypt directory, which I won't have to access too often.
The other will be a daily use wallet with a small amount of funds.

[Stephen Gornick]

Yes, the one with most of my btc will be in a truecrypt directory, which I won't have to access too often.
The other will be a daily use wallet with a small amount of funds.

To keep the wallet.dat protected, consider a symlink to the wallet.dat in the mounted directory (if on Linux)

[payb.tc]

Running with full separate data dirs works fine other than consuming a lot of disk space.

this is the way i do it... 1 gb is only 0.0002 * my disk space.

unfortunately the exe on windows only allows one running instance though, so you have to exit fully first before launching the other.