Make a Backup Electrum Bitcoin Wallet and Test Restoring Wallet
Please make sure you have the last Electrum Bitcoin Wallet, if not please download from here:
https://www.electrum.org/downloads/
An Electrum seed controls the generation of all addresses and private keys. As such, it’s vital to keep a paper copy of your wallet seed in a safe place. If you followed this tutorial from the beginning, you should have already written your seed on a piece of paper. If not, now would be a good time to create a backup.
Access your wallet’s seed through the seed icon in the lower right of the main screen, or by choosing Seed from the Wallet menu. When prompted, enter the secure password you chose when setting up the Electrum wallet.
Hand-copy the twelve words found in the box to a piece of paper and store it in a safe location. Remember, anyone who finds your seed can spend all of the funds in your wallet.
Additionally, a backup of your wallet, including any annotations you may have made, can be saved by choosing the Save Copy item from the File menu. This file stores the wallet’s encrypted seed along with any annotations. Restoring this backup will require the wallet password if you added one.
Testing Backup: Delete Your Wallet
The only thing needed to recover funds from an Electrum wallet is its seed. The optional procedure below describes how.
Note that this procedure will erase all of your wallet data. It’s designed to simulate a system failure. Restoring your wallet proves that you can recover from catastrophic system failure without loss of money. If you can’t receover, you’ll lose any money currently stored on your wallet.
Before continuing, verify that your current wallet contains only a small amount of bitcoin (or testnet bitcoin) that you would not be upset about losing. Also verify that you have access to your seed in written form.
To get Electrum to generate a new wallet, the old wallet data need to be deleted. Begin by exiting Electrum. Next, locate the program’s data directory based on your computer’s operating system.
Delete Wallet on Windows
- Show hidden files.
- Browse to
\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Local\Electrum. - delete all files in the directory.
Delete Wallet on Mac and Linux
- Open the Terminal;
- Type “rm -rf ~/.electrum/“.
If running Electrum Testnet, you’ll need to re-create the Electrum data directory to avoid errors. On Windows, create a folder named testnet in the Electrum folder. On Mac and Linux, issue the Terminal command mkdir -p ~/.electrum/testnet.
Testing Backup: Restore Your Wallet
Having cleared the data directory, restart Electrum. The Wizard will once again show itself. On the Keystore screen, choose the option “I already have a seed” and then click Next.
Copy your twelve word seed into the text field, then click Next. If your seed was entered correctly, Electrum will give you the option to add a password for your wallet.
After restoring your wallet, Electrum may list previous transactions as “unverified.” This condition will persist until all Electrum finishes synchronization with its server. You can monitor progress from the Network window. Access it by clicking on the circle to the lower right of the main window. When the block count under “Blockchain” equals the height indicated for the servers you’re connecting to, Electrum will be fully synchronized and all confirmed transactions should be displayed properly under the History tab.
Security
To change the wallet’s password, select the Password option from the Wallet menu, or click the lock icon in the lower right of the main window. Enter and confirm a new secure password.
Should you forget your wallet’s password, all is not lost. Your funds can be restored in their entirety using the recovery procedure described in the previous section.