Topic: How to Backup Wallet (Read 44179 times)

Right so obviously you be careful with it as cash and store it in safe places and encrypt it and not store all of it in one place.

Although it took a -$3 negative hit today. 
 
Too many miners not enough buyers and users.

Absolutely
On the other side, stealing your wallet.dat suffices to steal all your coins inside it

Ok.  Thanks for clarifying. I think I get it now. So if you want to secure your coins you only need the
wallet.dat file on a usb keychain or somewhere offline stored (with a backup) you don't need the whole client.

I was meaning "write down somewhere the bitcoin address of the new wallet", to know where to send your coins

Yes exactly, sorry for my poor english

I don't know, but it's not a good idea

ok... I'm sorry if I am still being a little dense, but what exactly do you
mean "write the address of your new empty wallet"

How do I make a new empty wallet? By just naming any plain old file emptywallet.dat and saving it with notepad or something? Or do I have to run and install a bitcoin client on a separate machine?

Or are you saying.... once I rename my wallet.dat to walletsavings.dat - the bitcoin client will automatically create a new wallet.dat and then a new adress to it, and THAT is the file I rename to emptywallet.dat and then rename
walletsavings.dat back to wallet.dat and poof, my coins are there again when I retstart the client... then I send to that address...   close the client and do the renaming thing again and take start the client.... wait to receieve the coins... repeat process with multiple names and store multiple walletsavings1.dat walletsavings2.dat around in various secure locations?

Then you just close bitcoint client, move the wallet back in and rename it as wallet.dat when you want to use the coins from that particular wallet and start up the client again.

What would happen if you did this while the client was running?

Yes, yes, yes
To do the transfer:
 write the address of your new empty wallet
 rename it (your new empty wallet) to emptywallet.dat
 rename walletsavngs.dat to wallet.dat
 start bitcoin
 send money to the address you wrote
 you now have your old wallet empty and the new one filled with your money

I believe in the next version, bitcoin will be able to handle different wallet so that problem will be solved

Can you elaborate how this works a little more?  If I install bit coin on a thumb drive it is still going to use the
wallet.dat in my users dir on win 7?  So I have to rename that walletsavngs.dat and then it will make a new one with no coins in it?

then how do I transfer some of the savings to the new one... I just want to make sure I don't screw things up and end up losing my coins, not that I have a gigantic amount but I figure better to understand this now rather than screw things up royally later.

I really wanted to just have an encrypted whole version on a thumb drive... does it ALWAYS place the wallet.dat file on your local machine? meaning you can't just walk around with your wallet all on your thumb drive without a machine
and say, then go use it somewhere (like you would a regular cash wallet)

My idea is to have several high grade flash drive wallets and keep one on a key chain so if I was sitting at an internet cafe or something that accepted bitcoins I could do it... more places in NYC are starting to take them.... but how do you do it if you're not home?  I don't want to use some third party service either....  I'm thinking you have it on a thumb drive encrypted with a password but I'm not sure how to go about doing this.

Some say never put your wallet into another machine but then how would you have bitcoin currency on you without carrying around a laptop or something?  I imagine having an amount that you need to use would not be a big risk just as you can't live your life in fear of having cash in your wallet that you're going to get mugged.  You carry the appropriate amount of cash you need in your wallet you don't usually carry your life savings around with you... 
some people are debt card crazy but I don't like banks and companies knowing every god damn ting I do and then marketing to me and tracking me... it's annoying... this is one of the things I like about bitcoin.

You do not need to backup the wallet just because you received money. Receiving money doesn't involve actually doing anything on your part other than updating your balance number.

Either rename wallet.dat to something else so bitcoin makes a new wallet.dat, or use my bitcoin fork with --wallet flag

That's what I figured.

How do you make a NEW wallet though?  Does it have to be on a different machine?

I tried to install the new client to a thumb drive but when I opened it up it was still my same old wallet, not a new one.

Backing up the wallet.dat file is meant to protect you from losing coins due to Windows eating itself, your hard drive dying, reinstalling Windows etc. The usual stuff that Windows users have to put up with. It won't necessarily protect you from having the file stolen. (Though if you know or suspect it's been stolen, you can always try to send the coins before the thief does.)

This backup does not make sense....

if you make and exact backup of your bitcoin wallet, as far as I can tell, it is only good for use if your original wallet never gets into trouble.

If some virus or phishing or just someone on your computer gets access to or spends the bitcoins in the original wallet - you are f&^cked. Hence?  What is the point of this backup? You will load the back and it will be invalid and the coins will be gone.

I think the only true backup is to make a NEW bitcoin wallet install on a thumb drive and encrypte it and disconnect it from the computer most of the time unless you need access to your coins, and then send your bitcoins to that separate wallet from your main wallet - so you have an operating wallet that you keep a few coins in, and then your savings wallet that is not connected to the internet.  Perhaps you backup the saving wallet just incase the usb drive goes bad or something... but other than that backup up your bitcoin wallet is useless unless I am blind and missing something here.

 

The Bitcoin Wiki has a page on backups: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Backup#Backup

I wrote my own script (instead of searching and using an existing script ) for regular and automated backups: https://github.com/hreese/Bitcoin-Wallet-Backup

I made a page on my site dedicated to creating a secure bitcoin wallet using a thumb drive. Even if you've never used Ubuntu before this tutorial will make it very easy for you. It includes detailed instructions on every step of installing Ubuntu and securing your wallet. Includes screenshots.

http://startbitcoin.com/how-to-create-a-secure-bitcoin-wallet/

If this was helpful to you, please donate. 1HbdRpinMDQ2cgUWsKiMPDN2icC8rNpS1i

-Think

In the file browser make sure to set the option to see hidden files. The wallet.dat is in the ".bitcoin" folder.

Boy, I'm really trying to follow the instructions here, but I can't even find a wallet.dat file on my system. I recently started using ubuntu 10.04 (like it), but linux is a daily learning challenge.  Where is wallet.dat?

This thread is extremely old. Since then, we've implemented the creation of a pool of 100 (by default) pre-generated keys that your client will use. That means that a backup won't expire after each transaction anymore. However, you still need to do regular backups.

Note: there is currently a bug where the pool won't be created in a new wallet until a few transactions are made.

Really seems like the client should have an option to automatically backup the wallet after every transaction if this is the case ehh...

Um, am I confused? You would restore your backup because you lost your wallet. So I backup, spend, loose my wallet. The backup is not reliable, I don't have any change keys.

I have to back up the wallet after every transaction, sent and received.

I just thought of another possibility. If I know I will never be using smaller units than .1 BTC I can churn my balance until it only contains tenths. Now I backup and can spend in increments of tenths without needing to make a new backup. Bleh, until someone sends me a 50. Does anyone know if I have a 50 and 3000 tenths if it will always use the tenths first? It ought I would think.

To keep it simple, you could think of it like backing up your email folder. I you backup, send some email and then restore your backup, you're not going to have your newly sent email.

Why you'd want to spend your coins and then restore a backup is beyond me (except for fraud reasons but someone committing fraud wouldn't be asking on a public forum).

I believe the more accurate answer is because BTC are spent in the chunks they came in.

E.g. you have 150 BTC which were generated by you. This gives you 3 x 50BTC chunks.

You decide to spend 125BTC on something super shiny. All 3 of your chunks get spent BUT 25BTC are returned as change.

Your wallet now has new data saying, all 3 chunks were spent but you now have a new 25 BTC amount (your 'change' if you will).

If you overwite this wallet, the system will know you've gotten rid of the 3 chunks (of 150BTC) but it won't have the new key for your 25BTC change, thus you lose it all (except you still have your super shiny).

That's my understanding of it - can someone more experienced confirm?