confusion about backup

[ralyodio]

Documentation seems to put forth that there are two ways to backup a wallet.

1. backup the wallet file to usb

or

2. export your private keys to another file

I have to format my computer, and have a backup of my private key, as generated from the "Export Private Keys" tool.

Is this sufficient to restore? I do not have a copy of the wallet file itself.

[jim618]

If you have an export of your private keys, you can create a new wallet and then import the backed up private keys using the 'Tools | Import Private Keys' and it will recreate your wallet. You will have your bitcoins but you will not have any labels that you made for any of the addresses. (The labels aren't stored in the private key export file).

The wallet files also contain the private keys so can be used to make a backup too.

With the most recent code the location of the files for a wallet have been tidied up so to backup EVERYTHING for a wallet called, say, saving, you can copy the files:

saving.wallet
saving.info
saving-data (a directory - copy the whole contents).

There are more details as to what each file does exactly in:
https://multibit.org/en/help/v0.5/help_fileDescriptions.html

[ralyodio]

Can you provide a button export wallet, labels, etc.? Like you do for keys.

I'd rather not muck around with individual files, as I'm afraid I might miss something, and not sure how to restore them.

If that isn't possible, can you tell me which directory I need to backup so that I can restore easily? I don't want to loose labels.

[jim618]

Raised as : Multibit-Legacy/multibit#211