Topic: Some questions about Cold wallet - page 2. (Read 308 times)

That is wrong.
A USB disk can not function like a hardware wallet that you connect it to your PC and sign transactions but it also doesn't have to only be a dumb storage. You can create your own advanced setup where you can safely sign transactions too. One way would be to install a Linux OS on the USB disk, encrypt the home folder, disable certain options that would allow access, disable network, etc. install Electrum, boot the OS and easily sign transactions offline in a very secure environment.

get yourself familiar, u can use a pen drive or or another operating system like linux installed on the same machine.

install electrum and see how it works, and once you get familiar, you can go ahead and buy a hardware wallet, it just helps you sleep safely at night is all.

as for your second question, as long as the seed is safe and not compromised, any coins held in the cold/hardware wallet are easily recoverable.

As an offline wallet? Sure. As a hardware wallet? No.

You can set up a wallet on an airgapped computer and then save a copy of that wallet on a USB drive. As long as you only ever connect that USB drive to airgapped computers, then it remains permanently offline. This is not a hardware wallet though. Hardware wallets are specifically designed to be resistant to both electronic and physical attacks, whereas a plain USB drive is highly susceptible to both. While a hardware wallet can be stolen, connected to an online computer, or connected to a computer filled with malware, without loss of your coins, a USB drive in any of these scenarios could very easily lead to loss of your coins.

Most hardware wallets will use seed phrases, which will let you recover all your wallets. Some also support encrypted digital back ups, such as on to an SD card.

---

I think the subtext of your question here is if you can avoiding paying for a hardware wallet and instead come up with your USB drive based system to save some money. The short answer is no. You will almost certainly come up with something far inferior and leave yourself open to attack vectors you haven't considered. You can set up airgapped and encrypted cold storage, and a USB drive could be part of that, but it is not for the newbie and requires a degree of technical knowledge and competence.

Read this: https://medium.com/mycrypto/the-difference-between-a-hardware-wallet-and-a-usb-drive-c50523d24e02

If the hardware is broken and cannot function, then you can recover your funds from a computer or from another hardware wallet using the seed phrase. If you neither know what a seed phrase is, read this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Seed_phrase

Actually, I've never used a cold wallet, so that I want to know that can a USB Pendrive be used as an offline wallet or hardware wallet?
My other question is since I have never used a hardware wallet, that's why I want to know is it possible to recover a hardware wallet if it is lost or broken, or damaged?
I hope I will get good answer from this community