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Electrum creates the first 20 adresses of a wallet, and then, when needed, could generate many more new ones.

after reading a lot of posts and at the point to choose my way among different solutions  for the management of "wallets & adresses",

I have a doubt and a question :

for example  : after one year  and the use of around one hundred adresses in my "default_wallet",I loose my HD (that's life)  but as I Have my Seed... no problem,  new PC, upload of the last release of ELECTRUM, restore of the wallet by the Seed ....
What will I get...   the first 20 adresses generated firstly by the seed  or the 103 really used ???   
How  Electrum could refind the last adresses only with the initial Seed(which remains unchanged)

Thanks for your lights on my shadows
 

You will get all your addresses.

All the addresses are generated from your seed in sequence. When you restore your wallet Electrum simply keeps generating new addresses in sequence until it finds 20 successive unused ones. A used address is any address that has received bitcoins to it. So don't worry you will never lose your bitcoins as long as you have the seed backup.

Abdussama.... you're the best  :D  and more  the fastest   ;D

thanks

If the explanation of Abdussamad is clear and helpful, it could remains a problem,

Electrum allows to generate "manually" more new addresses, imagine 100 news empy ones .
I send one different to each of my 100 "future customers"  from my e-shop,
naturally only 30% among them will really buy and send money...
as I can't manage the order of the real "actives addresses" it's possible than more than 20 consecutives adresses remains unused

so when restoring from the seed, Electrum will stop as soon as 20 empty addresses are found...  YES ???   NO ????
and if YES  what about the "orphans addresses" (number  55  to 100)     lost for ever???

If that's the way... people must be awarded :o

By default, yes.


No, no addresses are every lost. There is a "gap_limit" which defaults to 20. Thus the wallet stops after 20 empty addresses. Usually its not a good idea to modify this value. If you however used the wallet as a merchant you should increase the value to e.g. 1000 when you restore a commercially used wallet from seed.

Of course;: the solution , is when the wallet is restored with the seed, to ask for the generation of the hundred (for example) of the previously generated addresses, then ELECTRUM will search in the block chain the effective content of each of them...

what a wonderful world... something like... paradise ? ;D

BooToo,

Your needs are somewhat unique where gap limit is concerned.  What you describe is resolved by setting a manually higher gap limit as already mentioned.  Do you have any comments/notes on your transactions, and how do you handle saving those if you use them?  In my substantial transactions I don't have e business so my addresses don't have say 30 empty consecutive addresses in the list.  The default gap limit functions well for my needs.  However; I am thinking about experimenting along the lines you speak of.  My personal answer has always been to keep a solid backup of my wallets where all notes are relevant to me.

Actually increasing the gap limit is something that advanced users do so there is no easy option for it. You have to restore your wallet as you normally would and then follow this:


Note that you shouldn't increase the gap limit to more than a 100 (I recommend 50 as above). Electrum slows down with thousands of addresses so you shouldn't burden it with a higher gap limit. Eventually if you do end up using thousands of addresses you would be well advised to create a new wallet and begin anew. You can always send your bitcoins from the old wallet to the new one.

somebody can try uninstall the electrum from thier own pc. and the reintsall back and do a recovery..
see what happen.

I already did uninstall and reinstall back the electrum.
Why It didnt ask a seed, just asking password and you just get into  the app.
unisntall and reinstall just in 3 minutes.

The wallet files are stored separately (http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#where-is-my-wallet-file-located) and not removed when you uninstall electrum (the risk of funds losses is too great for it to remove the wallet files too).

You don't need to uninstall and reinstall to create a new wallet. Just use file  menu > new/restore to begin the process. More details here: https://bitcoinelectrum.com/restoring-your-standard-wallet-from-seed/ and here: https://bitcoinelectrum.com/frequently-asked-questions/#how-do-i-open-a-different-wallet

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The wallet files are stored separately (http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html#where-is-my-wallet-file-located) and not removed when you uninstall electrum (the risk of funds losses is too great for it to remove the wallet files too).

You don't need to uninstall and reinstall to create a new wallet. Just use file  menu > new/restore to begin the process. More details here: https://bitcoinelectrum.com/restoring-your-standard-wallet-from-seed/ and here: https://bitcoinelectrum.com/frequently-asked-questions/#how-do-i-open-a-different-wallet


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Thanks abdussamad  :)