Newbie Question

[caribbeanbitcoiner]

I joined the Dark side and bought around .44 btc  I'm looking at longterm investing in bitcoin while I'm young and in college. Should I looking into picking up a cheap refub used netbook for offlinestorage from ebay/craiglist? The netbook I was looking at is a DELL INSPIRON 910 which has a PCI-E SSD HDD . Is the HDD a no-no for Cold-storage?

All recommendation and tips are welcome!

[wenben]

Use Armory and paper wallet for cold storage. Not point wasting a laptop and still have run the risk of hard disk failure and corruption.

[papalegba]

i second that!

[caribbeanbitcoiner]

Use Armory and paper wallet for cold storage. Not point wasting a laptop and still have run the risk of hard disk failure and corruption.

Thanks for replying! The only thing worried about is losing my paper wallet since I'm a international student studying in the US since I move around a lot.

[lihuajkl]

Probably you can try to remember the private key then no risk to lose it!

[CripLib]

Indeed, you don't need to buy a laptop just for the cold storage. It makes no sense, because it's much easier to keep a pen drive/CD/piece of paper with a QRcode/private key stored/printed in it than a notebook. And if the notebook goes broken, etc? Even a small micro sd card will do.

And if you move a lot, that's just one more reason...

Thanks for replying! The only thing worried about is losing my paper wallet since I'm a international student studying in the US since I move around a lot.

If you are careful enough you won't loose your cold storage, because it would be throwing your money away

Just to be on the safe side, you should keep different copies (backups) in different places. And, of course, encrypted.

Please, have a look in these webpages for more info:

• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Cold_storage
• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet
• http://criplib.blogspot.com/2014/03/paper-wallets.html

Probably you can try to remember the private key then no risk to lose it!

The memory wallet can also be a good idea, but if you forget it, good bye coins...

[caribbeanbitcoiner]

Indeed, you don't need to buy a laptop just for the cold storage. It makes no sense, because it's much easier to keep a pen drive/CD/piece of paper with a QRcode/private key stored/printed in it than a notebook. And if the notebook goes broken, etc? Even a small micro sd card will do.

And if you move a lot, that's just one more reason...

Thanks for replying! The only thing worried about is losing my paper wallet since I'm a international student studying in the US since I move around a lot.

If you are careful enough you won't loose your cold storage, because it would be throwing your money away

Just to be on the safe side, you should keep different copies (backups) in different places. And, of course, encrypted.

Please, have a look in these webpages for more info:

• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Cold_storage
• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet
• http://criplib.blogspot.com/2014/03/paper-wallets.html

Probably you can try to remember the private key then no risk to lose it!

The memory wallet can also be a good idea, but if you forget it, good bye coins...

OK so I guess using a pen drive with linux and Armory installed and backup copies of my wallet.dat is the most cheaper and efficient way?

[freedomno1]

Thanks for replying! The only thing worried about is losing my paper wallet since I'm a international student studying in the US since I move around a lot.

Indeed, you don't need to buy a laptop just for the cold storage. It makes no sense, because it's much easier to keep a pen drive/CD/piece of paper with a QRcode/private key stored/printed in it than a notebook. And if the notebook goes broken, etc? Even a small micro sd card will do.

And if you move a lot, that's just one more reason...

Yep a USB stick backup or two will be the cheapest way to store it safely just make sure not to lose it when moving.
Download Bitcoin Core / Armory
Backup the wallet on a USB or two and have a portable unit you can access.

[caribbeanbitcoiner]

Thanks for replying! The only thing worried about is losing my paper wallet since I'm a international student studying in the US since I move around a lot.

Indeed, you don't need to buy a laptop just for the cold storage. It makes no sense, because it's much easier to keep a pen drive/CD/piece of paper with a QRcode/private key stored/printed in it than a notebook. And if the notebook goes broken, etc? Even a small micro sd card will do.

And if you move a lot, that's just one more reason...

Yep a USB stick backup or two will be the cheapest way to store it safely just make sure not to lose it when moving.
Download Bitcoin Core / Armory
Backup the wallet on a USB or two and have a portable unit you can access.

Can you guys point me to tutorials or links that explain this method? Thanks!

[Kprawn]

Goto Bitaddress.org and save the page as a html file. Then disconnect from the internet and generate some paper wallets. {That is the fastest, but insecure way of doing, cold storage}

If you want to get video tutorials of more secure methods of cold storage, you can visit youtube and search for "bitcoin paper wallet"

I simply do not have enough time now, to go into the details, but that will help you.

Oh.. And with the "badusb" hack, I would stay away from using any "Usb" type storage devices. Some "bad" software may lurk in the firmware.  {Formatting will not help}  

[Katekyo]

Can you guys point me to tutorials or links that explain this method? Thanks!

here

(...)
Please, have a look in these webpages for more info:

• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Cold_storage
• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet
• http://criplib.blogspot.com/2014/03/paper-wallets.html

(...)

[freedomno1]

Can you guys point me to tutorials or links that explain this method? Thanks!

Sure no problem here is a tutorial of how to create one for Bitcoin Core (New version of QT)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGXf2xFyWaE
It's a bit slow because of loading the chain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGvrai3JxxI
One for Armory as well