In real life, what is the best way to store your key?

as dws said, in your head is best. i might use a sentence, line of poetry, or perhaps a spelled out date, with extra characters somewhere inside, and hash it with MD5. if you make the MD5 hash the key, and generate it as part of the key entry process, you need only remember the input that generates the actual key, which is usually much easier to remember than the key itself.

~Particle *accelerates*