<p>I am new to bitcoin, I wander what are the differences, and pros/cons (if any) between the file generated by bitcoin-qt when clicking on &quot;backup wallet&quot; vs copying the file &quot;wallet.dat&quot;? I see these files are indeed different with &quot;cmp&quot; so I am assuming that there are differences between these files. Can one of these files recover all of the information in the other?</p>
<p>EDIT: after a few backups I noticed that if I close the wallet, and then wait a few minutes. A backup at this moment equals the wallet.dat file.</p>

<wallet><backup>
bitcoin-qt "backup wallet" vs copying wallet.dat
Reimundo Heluani
# bitcoin-qt "backup wallet" vs copying wallet.dat

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-09-02)

I am new to bitcoin, I wander what are the differences, and pros/cons (if any) between the file generated by bitcoin-qt when clicking on "backup wallet" vs copying the file "wallet.dat"? I see these files are indeed different with "cmp" so I am assuming that there are differences between these files. Can one of these files recover all of the information in the other?

EDIT: after a few backups I noticed that if I close the wallet, and then wait a few minutes. A backup at this moment equals the wallet.dat file.

**Tags:** wallet, backup


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