(This is a reposting for new XBY investors)

Making a backup of your wallet is an important step in securing access to your coins.

We recommend making multiple backups, at least one of which is offline on an encrypted USB drive.

Imagine if there is a fire and your residence burns down? It’s a good idea to have backups in multiple locations if you plan on long-term safekeeping. Remember that without access to your wallet.dat or private key, you won’t be able to access your coins and we won’t be able to help you!

When you make a backup, a copy of your ’wallet.dat’ file will be made. This ’wallet.dat’ file is required to access the corresponding funds on the network.

To make this process easier, you will need to enable the showing of file extensions on your operating system. In Windows you can find it when you open a folder. Go to the top menu and select View. In the section below, there is an option to ’Show File Extensions’. Make sure it is selected. On macOS Sierra, click Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Select ‘Show all filename extensions.’

Making the backup

1. Start the wallet software, go to File and click ‘Backup Wallet’.

2. Select a location and give the backup a name. Press Save. You may wish to change the filename to something else that lets you know which coin it belongs to (important if you have multiple backups for different coins!) For example, ‘xbywallet.dat’. You’ll need to rename this back to wallet.dat if you ever restore it.

That’s it! Make sure to keep this backup file in a safe place. Preferably in multiple places!

Remember: If you lose all your wallet.dat files and your private key, you will lose access to your funds.

Restoring a backup

1. Locate your wallet.dat backup.

2. Copy the file into the same directory where you store your blockchain.

Windows: The default directory is ‘C:\Users\your_windows_user_name\AppData\Roaming\xtrabytes’

Mac: The directory is $HOME/Library/Application Support/xtrabytes/ OR /Users/username/Library/Application Support/xtrabytes/

3. If you have given your backup a different name, rename it to wallet.dat

4. Start the wallet software, you are now able to access your restored wallet.

Exporting Private Key

It is important to store a backup of your Private Key so that your wallet.dat file can be regenerated in the event of a loss or data corruption.

Note: If you have multiple addresses in your ‘Receive Coins’ tab, you will need to export the private key for each address.

Open Your Wallet Go to ‘Receive Coins’ tab Copy the address you would like to export the private key for Open the console window by clicking Help→Debug Window→Console Type dumpprivkey <receive address> The return string is your private key. Copy/Paste and save your private key somewhere safe Repeat steps 2-6 for each address in the ‘Receive Coins’ tab of your wallet Close the debug window

Important Note: If you backup your private key on the receive tab, you will be saving almost all coins. I say almost because …. When you send coins, any leftover “change” is passed on to a new address in the wallet (one that isn’t publicly visible). Any coins passed to this change address won’t be backed up as it’s a completely different address. So you must make sure you have no change addresses when backing up your key. Read our support guide here

Importing Private Key

Importing your private key is done to recover your wallet.dat file for a particular address

Open your wallet Open the console window by clicking Help→Debug Window→Console Type importprivkey <private key> You should receive a message like below, with no error

Finally, close the wallet application. And then open the wallet again and allow it to sync