Quote from: apogio on Today at 12:14:04 PM

Quote from: vapourminer on Today at 11:39:56 AM

yes

any time i use it i make sure to back up wallet.dat in case any new change addys or whatnot are generated.

its habit at this point. same wallet.dat since 2011, and still in Non-HD format.

Wow that's tricky! When I asked I was expecting to see people storing bitcoin in this way, but I thought most people have migrated to descriptor wallets so far.
So, how do you do it? Btw, is it cold-storage or are you also spending from this wallet? Because if you don't spend, then isn't it more rare that you actually use it and that you also get the chance to back it up?
Lastly, you had no issues since 2011? That's remarkable to say the least. So self-custody of wallet.dat is doable, no matter what many other people say!

Until 2017, I used a non-HD wallet in Bitcoin Core, even though I had the option to upgrade to HD. However, I needed to create a new wallet, and since Bitcoin Core was already generating HD wallets by default, that’s how it happened.

Bitcoin Core doesn't create wallets with mnemonic backups, making physical backups (on paper, steel, etc.) more difficult, since writing down the 111 characters of the BIP32 private root key greatly increases the margin of error.

My suggestion for this is: If you want to have physical backups in addition to digital ones, create a BIP39 wallet, back it up as you would any BIP39 wallet, and import the BIP32 descriptor into Bitcoin Core. This is what I did. I think storing an xpriv physically is very risky (both in terms of errors and theft).

An encrypted digital backup (wallet.dat) can be replicated much more easily, avoiding the risk of storage failure. (But why not combine physical and digital backups?)

Descriptors were one of the best innovations I've seen in Bitcoin Core, after BIP32. It's a shame it's not very widespread.