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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: CE1313 on May 23, 2017, 12:39:47 PM



Title: Lost wallet.dat on bitcoin-qt 0.8.6
Post by: CE1313 on May 23, 2017, 12:39:47 PM
Hi there, we had a number of bitcoins in a local installation of bitcoin-qt in 2014. Since then, the data directory in the user profile (%APPDATA) has been delete on the PC resulting in deletion of the wallet.dat
If the wallet.dat was encrypted with a passphrase is there any relation to this passphrase and the private key allowing recovery? Is there any where else that this file or a copy may reside?


the harddrive on the computer is now full from re-downloading the whole chain and creating a new wallet.dat file making data recovery near impossible. Have used the public key to scan the chain and this definitely appears to be a new wallet as there are no transactions.


CE


Title: Re: Lost wallet.dat on bitcoin-qt 0.8.6
Post by: cr1776 on May 23, 2017, 02:51:33 PM
Hi there, we had a number of bitcoins in a local installation of bitcoin-qt in 2014. Since then, the data directory in the user profile (%APPDATA) has been delete on the PC resulting in deletion of the wallet.dat
If the wallet.dat was encrypted with a passphrase is there any relation to this passphrase and the private key allowing recovery? Is there any where else that this file or a copy may reside?


the harddrive on the computer is now full from re-downloading the whole chain and creating a new wallet.dat file making data recovery near impossible. Have used the public key to scan the chain and this definitely appears to be a new wallet as there are no transactions.


CE


The private keys are in the wallet.dat and the passphrase will be completely different from the private key(s) is there is no relationship between the two.  The private keys could also reside in a backup, if you have one of the computer.

You could try scanning the disk to see if by some miracle the wallet.dat is still there, but if you have written a lot to the hard disk with a re-download of the block chain, that is a small chance.

Other than that you are probably out of luck.



Title: Re: Lost wallet.dat on bitcoin-qt 0.8.6
Post by: Casy on May 23, 2017, 03:47:57 PM
Hi there, we had a number of bitcoins in a local installation of bitcoin-qt in 2014. Since then, the data directory in the user profile (%APPDATA) has been delete on the PC resulting in deletion of the wallet.dat
If the wallet.dat was encrypted with a passphrase is there any relation to this passphrase and the private key allowing recovery? Is there any where else that this file or a copy may reside?


the harddrive on the computer is now full from re-downloading the whole chain and creating a new wallet.dat file making data recovery near impossible. Have used the public key to scan the chain and this definitely appears to be a new wallet as there are no transactions.


CE


There's hardly any chance for recovery. Especially if you have overwritten the data. The only chance is if you remember that you did a backup, for example using the "backupwallet" command.
The behaviour of the client is normal, it by default creates an entirely new wallet if none exists.