Quote from: MATTTT on November 26, 2012, 07:26:30 PM

Oh,and

3)Suggesting people "might want to make multiple copies" is bad advice. People should *definitely* have more than one copy of their wallet. As you say, "losing your wallet.dat is worse than someone stealing it." but also: Flash drives go bad. Files get corrupted. Things get misplaced. Mistakes happen. 2 validated copies is a bare minimum. I would say that "probably want to make more than two copies (and keep 2 copies on each storage device)" is better advice.

In the early 90's, I became unable to unlock my PGP secret key - the passphrase I remembered and was sure was correct no longer worked. Was the file corrupted, or did I somehow misremember it? I'll never know for sure. The key wasn't backed up, so I couldn't try or compare with a backup.

+1

And make sure to keep backups on multiple physical locations as well (both in your house as well as outside / online). Gotta consider scenarios like fire, flood, burglary, EMP blast from the local power plant, etc. Yet it's SO easy to avoid this risk. Just email it do some webmail addresses (with different providers, e.g. hotmail/gmail/etc). Dropbox. Send it to a couple of friends of family members ("hey please ignore this message and just leave this file in your archives, thanks"). Of course you do this with encrypted wallets only.

With Bitcoin, there is really NO EXCUSE to lose your money to stupid accidents. Don't be sorry.