Bitcoin Forum

Hi I tried to mine some bitcoins back in 2009/10. I remember I successfully mined some.. But I erased the mining program since I did to see the value back then.. I have also formatted the hard drive. I throw away the pc after it stop working, BUT I kept the HD:) Is it possible to get the information out if I contact a pc guru?

Wow, thats difficult thing to do. If you have transferred it on your wallet and have made a back up file then it is retrievable. But given your situation the moment you reformat your hard drive then its a good bye to your bitcoins. But I heard that there are some pros on this things who can retrieve files even if they are already formatted. Im not just sure about this so I suggest you should ask a pc guru. If it is not retrievable then at least you made a choice and if it is then you will be damn lucky and will not regret not doing something.

SO i suggest, ask question to professionals on this matter.

If it has been reformatted even without a backup, recovery is more than possible provided the file is not overwritten. I have retrieved items from business document to decades of family pictures through data recovery for clients. Take reformatting as ripping the index from a book and marking the pages free to use.

As I have done data recovery for many I have offered if he is close enough to meet me in person and we attempt it in person using my equipment, you must follow protocols such as mounting it as read only and imaging the drive, working with the image etc for the best chance. Data recovery is a delicate task at best and shouldn't be attempted by just anyone, even the simple act of putting it in a PC can cause windows to write a virtual swap file to it, etc.

If he indeed CPU mined coins from those days, there will be at least one block's worth (50 coins). I wouldn't send the drive willy nilly to anyone especially with the amount of scam attempts I witness, and this is why I want to offer doing it in person, anywhere on this continent, I am a traveller. I would also in the same breath present this user with a TREZOR should we find any sizable amount of coins.

It would be worth enquiring just in case, if it isn't possible it is a shame but fingers crossed you will be in luck.

If it was merely a simple format, you can retrieve each and every file wiped, the more it is used (written to) the chances go down. Sounds to me like he didn't even blow away the partition table. This is a delicate task and one I wouldn't trust any random user to either. Given from what he describes and the fact he CPU mined coins from those days I am thinking its whole blocks and worth me taking a plane with an enclosure my laptop and software and meeting this guy to do what we have to do IN person. If we do not succeed then I would get a trip out of it and we gave it a damn good go and he knows that it was done next to him so one could not be sly and move coins.

If we succeeded, I asked for a little bounty and we could move coins to an address he controls in person, (that is, a trezor for him, I would educate him why we would use one)

If we are talking about formatting a HD then recovering things would be difficult since all things inside on that HD is already wiped out and if there so back.up then don't expect that you could able to retrieve your coins back..dont really know the exact thing since I'm not really expert on recovering things.

Recovering from a formatted HDD is trivial if you have the skills, all a format does is delete the table of contents and marks the space as available for writing, the actual files in the space marked are not removed until they are written over, it is trivial to recover with the right skills but without them (such as putting the HDD in another computer mounted as read/write) swap data among other things can cause harm.

try search gogle if there is any way can do it
also thats freakin hard tho

I think he have tried that already. I heard a few instance of being able to retrieve from a formatted hard drive, I just don't know if its legit or hoax. I will find information on this and will be giving you a ring when I find where I've heard or read that. Hopefully I can help you retrieve that and maybe you can tip me if we are successful, so I will give it a shot.
Do you have skype?

May I ask why you decided to get rid of the program?

As I mentioned in the other thread, there's a way to do this with a program called Testdisk if it was just a simple format, but you may want a professional to recover the files and you'll want someone that you can definitely trust. Also, if you were the original miner you should probably be tech-savvy enough to know how to retrieve the mined coin, so you're going to probably need to explain how you found out about Bitcoin in 2009/2010 and are yet not technically inclined on how to recover files from a formatted drive.

Maybe theres a possibility you could retrieve your coins in your hard drive but the chances are very thin. Maybe seek for experts from that kind of thing because it not easy to do it yourself only. You already deleted the important files. It will be harder for you those files you already deleted. Thats why professional help is a.must.

I dont think so that recovering your HDD would probably recover your entire file into full file entity because bad sectors in HDD does not guarantee you good file outcome, as with my own experience recovering my personal computer external HD the file was broken and missing some details. Maybe you can recover some but not all of it and the process was too long and chances of recovery is 20% more importantly is i can suggest in the next refresh of your PC HD if you buy new one you must back-up it with another external so that there is always a shadow copy of it, and there you can say totally you can recover everything in full.

I don't think you will be able to find the blocks and wallet software in the HDD if it's as old as in 2010. Chances are almost non existent you will get your bitcoins out of that HDD.

Even if you manage to put it in a new PC and use professional recovery software at your disposal they will at their best recover files and folders, not programs as far as I know (Recovermyfiles at least which I own).

If you still want to give it a try here is the most useful link for you

http://forensicswiki.org/wiki/Tools:Data_Recovery (http://forensicswiki.org/wiki/Tools:Data_Recovery)

Your only chance is if you know someone from the NSA as they have recovery tools not disclosed to the general public.

?

recovering a data file from a formatted hd from 2010 is straightforward really. as long as it was a quick format and it has not been used since. or lightly used.

he just needs the wallet.dat file.

Answer: Probably. Grab a copy of something like Encase Forensics, get a write blocker, make a duplicate of the disk to a second disk, put the second disk on the write blocker, and start looking for the wallet files.

Not impossible, just would take bitcoin and time to do.