What happens to my BTC if my computer melts, explodes, etc?

Abdussamad

legendary

Activity: 3682

Merit: 1580

Quote from: russokai on March 02, 2014, 07:03:36 AM

Quote from: Abdussamad on February 28, 2014, 04:24:13 AM

Quote from: Thedomone15 on February 27, 2014, 02:30:02 PM

But make multiple backups and if you encrypt them as well (with TrueCrypt, PGP, etc), then you can even upload some to the cloud. But put one on a flash drive and mail to a relative or bury it in the yard or whatever. As long as it is encrypted, and you can decrypt it, then it shoudl be safe.

Removable drives are ok but online accounts get hacked all the time and are not safe. If you store it on a removable drive the thief has to a) get the drive b) brute force the password. If you put it online then getting the wallet file becomes that much easier. Your wallet then becomes a brain wallet with a human generated passphrase.

If you set a good enough password, it isn't going to be "brute forced". Mine is a fairly long nonsensical sentence with extra characters and numbers, etc. And remember you would have both a password on the Multibit wallet itself and and also on the file encryption, so that is two they have to break into...and PGP hasn't been broken yet and neither has TrueCrypt to the best of my knowledge.

If you upload it to the cloud, I would zip all of it into one file and encrypt that...change the name to ___.avi or .jpg or whatever and then people wouldn't even know it is a bitcoin related file.

See here on why human generated passphrases or passwords are no match for brute forcing:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3345309

russokai

full member

Activity: 130

Merit: 100

Quote from: Abdussamad on February 28, 2014, 04:24:13 AM

Quote from: Thedomone15 on February 27, 2014, 02:30:02 PM

But make multiple backups and if you encrypt them as well (with TrueCrypt, PGP, etc), then you can even upload some to the cloud. But put one on a flash drive and mail to a relative or bury it in the yard or whatever. As long as it is encrypted, and you can decrypt it, then it shoudl be safe.

Removable drives are ok but online accounts get hacked all the time and are not safe. If you store it on a removable drive the thief has to a) get the drive b) brute force the password. If you put it online then getting the wallet file becomes that much easier. Your wallet then becomes a brain wallet with a human generated passphrase.

If you set a good enough password, it isn't going to be "brute forced". Mine is a fairly long nonsensical sentence with extra characters and numbers, etc. And remember you would have both a password on the Multibit wallet itself and and also on the file encryption, so that is two they have to break into...and PGP hasn't been broken yet and neither has TrueCrypt to the best of my knowledge.

If you upload it to the cloud, I would zip all of it into one file and encrypt that...change the name to ___.avi or .jpg or whatever and then people wouldn't even know it is a bitcoin related file.

Abdussamad

legendary

Activity: 3682

Merit: 1580

Quote from: Thedomone15 on February 27, 2014, 02:30:02 PM

But make multiple backups and if you encrypt them as well (with TrueCrypt, PGP, etc), then you can even upload some to the cloud. But put one on a flash drive and mail to a relative or bury it in the yard or whatever. As long as it is encrypted, and you can decrypt it, then it shoudl be safe.

Removable drives are ok but online accounts get hacked all the time and are not safe. If you store it on a removable drive the thief has to a) get the drive b) brute force the password. If you put it online then getting the wallet file becomes that much easier. Your wallet then becomes a brain wallet with a human generated passphrase.

OlliBrandt80

member

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Merit: 10

Very helpful advices. Thanks Abdussamad and Thedomone15 for sharing your knowledges with us

Thedomone15

newbie

Activity: 17

Merit: 0

Yes good advice. Multibit is a pretty small directory, so just backup the entire thing if it makes you feel better. Or just backup your wallet.dat file, which is really small.

But make multiple backups and if you encrypt them as well (with TrueCrypt, PGP, etc), then you can even upload some to the cloud. But put one on a flash drive and mail to a relative or bury it in the yard or whatever. As long as it is encrypted, and you can decrypt it, then it shoudl be safe.

And yes make sure have backed up since you created a new address. I just made a new wallet and just quickly made 400 addresses in Multibit so I can use those for some time and not need to do any more backups for the forseeable future.

Abdussamad

legendary

Activity: 3682

Merit: 1580

Quote from: globe-biz on February 26, 2014, 01:10:26 AM

In the worst case scenario what will happen to my bitcoins if my computer is damaged. If I have a backup of my key saved on a usb ; will I be able to buy another computer, download multibit and then upload my previous key? This is my understanding and everything will be normal right?

Yes.

Quote

Are there any risks or things I am not considering?

Thank you

The biggest risk is that you don't have a complete backup. A complete backup is a recent backup that contains the private keys for all your addresses. If, since your last backup, you created a new address and received coins there then your backup is stale and you need to create a fresh backup.

To prevent problems arising from a bad backup you should practice restoring from backup.

globe-biz

member

Activity: 162

Merit: 10

In the worst case scenario what will happen to my bitcoins if my computer is damaged. If I have a backup of my key saved on a usb ; will I be able to buy another computer, download multibit and then upload my previous key? This is my understanding and everything will be normal right?

Are there any risks or things I am not considering?

Thank you

Topic: What happens to my BTC if my computer melts, explodes, etc? (Read 805 times)