How can I keep my wallet secure?

[bitcoin1992]

with wallet.dat ,  If I had a hard drive failure, would I be able to recover my bitcoins ?

[hilariousandco]

That's why you need to make at least one back up. Make copies and put one on a USB or burn it to a cd-r. If you don't have a back-up and you lose the wallet.dat you lose your coins.

[LuckyBtc]

If your wallet.dat is corrupted you can't recover. So just backup your wallet.dat with winrar( password protected) or similar  app and store in gmail,google drive,copy it in pendrive etc...

[alwinlinzee]

Prior to such a circumstance of hard drive failure i strongly suggest you create copies of your password or passphrase on whitepaper,cd roms etc. That's what i employ and its been efficient so far.

[DrG]

If you're keeping a month or more worth of income in BTC in your wallet I would suggest learning how to use Armory (since you're OK with blockchain downloading it seems):
https://bitcoinarmory.com/about/using-our-wallet/

If that seems too cumbersome, then at the very least copy the wallet.dat file from your machine and put it on a couple of USB drives.  Put one drive someplace safe in your house and the other drive someplace like your car or parent's house.  That way even if you have a fire you'll still have a copy.

The problem with Bitcoin-QT is it needs regular backups if you do frequent sends from your wallet.  If all you do is receive coins then you should be good backing it up very infrequently.

[noel57]

I don't know how much BTC you have on your wallet but if its a bit high then i suggest you visit this link https://bitcoinarmory.com/about/using-our-wallet/ it will really be worth it.

[Talukdar001]

I think you need to use complicated password. Or the best way to use offline wallet.

[oceans]

If your wallet was to become corrupted for some reason you would lose everything. I advise making a backup of your wallet if you can and keeping it password protected so that if anything like this happens you always have a backup to go back to, otherwise you lose your coins.

[melisande]

A back up will most accurately do the job in case a wallet gets corrupt.

[lynn_402]

You'll be safe, wallet backups are relatively easy to import to new wallets if you lose access to yours.

But it's important to remember to make backup often, since new addresses can be created in your wallet which might not be available in your backup file.

[gelar24]

so far I safely store the online wallet, and do not forget to attach security for 2FA: D

and no access to any man's hand against computer / laptop

[bitcoin1992]

thanks
for all answers !!!

[b!z]

so far I safely store the online wallet, and do not forget to attach security for 2FA: D

and no access to any man's hand against computer / laptop

An offline wallet would be more secure. Of course, it's usually okay to use an online wallet for convenience, as long as you're okay with losing the small amount have in there.

[thisisthis]

Always make some backups of your wallet using different medias, usb pendrives, hard disks, cd-dvd and paperwallets.

[BiTJack]

Keep as many copies of your dat file at safe places, personally i keep a copy of my whole blockchain too.
The complete roaming folder i mean.

[DannyHamilton]

with wallet.dat ,  If I had a hard drive failure, would I be able to recover my bitcoins ?

The answer to your question depends on what wallet program you are using.  They each work a bit differently and have different requirements for protection from a hard drive failure.

Are you using, Bitcoin Core? Armory? Electrum? MultiBit? blockchain.info? Something else?

[thecast]

Store it offline and do not send it to anyone, under any circumstances.