Bitcoin Forum

Hello, I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop and I just found out from the computer repair shop that the tech was unable to retrieve the data I had on my hard drive.  Previously I downloaded a bunch of cold storage wallets and deposited coins in them.  I was forced to transfer because Cryptopia was delisting the coin.  The tech told me he could send the hard drive to some other place but it would be about $400 but I told him to forget about it and just put a new hard drive since I don't think the total amount of coins in US dollars is worth close to $400.  I am wondering if there is a way I could still retrieve the coins from the cold storage wallet.  I will know the transaction information from the cryptopia exchange as well as an email that i clicked to confirm the transaction.

You won't be able to recover those coins only with the transaction id. You need to able to access private keys which are stored on that hard drive. Professional data recovery is extremely expensive and they still might not recover what you need. Modern wallets generate a seed (12 or 24 words) which can be used to recover the wallet on any other device.

$400 USD is too expensive for recovering a file but it depends on the size of the hard drive. Mostly here we are asking for $50 to $200 per 500gb. If you are near here in my country why not just go to our shop and let me try to recover it.

Anyway, I think you can fix the corrupted hard drive with few commands.

Let me ask if the hard drive includes the windows OS? If yes then you can access the safe mode with networking?

If you access this then you can use this command "chkdsk E: /f /r /x" E: is a sample drive letter if you know which drive letter is corrupted just replace it.

It will fix your corrupted hard disk but If this doesn't work you need a Hiren's proteus boot CD or USB but this is mostly used by professional tech and only a few techs have this. However, you can use the free version of Hiren's I think they also have some recovery tools but what we need is the backup tool where you can create a clone backup of your harddisk and transfer it to extra hard disk just to protect your corrupted hard drive from destroying everything from your hard drive while recovering your all files.

Now, you can use any recovery tool from Hiren's from here https://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

The tech guy happened to call me when I was reading this. I asked him again he couldn't recover anything. I forgot to ask him about chkdsk E:/f/r /x" E:   I believe it was the C drive. It was a 1 TB hard drive.  I live in the USA Manassas Virginia.  It came with windows 8 then I upgraded to windows 10. I previously tried many times myself to start windows and I don't think I remember seeing a safe mode network or if I did I couldn't figure it out.  I think I remember seeing an option for command prompt

Take a look at this link and maybe you will find how to do the safe mode networking here https://support.eset.com/kb2268/?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

I don't know if the chkdsk will work on windows 10 I haven't tested yet because this OS  have their own recovery if the hard disk and OS is corrupted but you can try it.

what do you mean by downloading cold storage wallets?
are you talking about installing and running the official qt wallets of your coins on your laptop?
just fyi, best practice of storing cold wallet is by keeping multiple copies on different separate media

is the hard drive totally dead or still working but unable to boot up and enter windows?
have you tried accessing your corrupted hard drive as external drive from another laptop/pc?
try it then locate and extract the needed files, wallet.dat files or whatever files you store the wallet info

I just got back from driving to the computer repair shop in case they were still looking at my laptop. I mentioned to the two tech guys at the shop about the safe mode networking and the command chkdsk E:/f/r /x" E:. They seemed like they knew about those methods and then told me that they could not do anything because the hard drive is physically damaged.

I was generally pretty careful with my laptop though.

If the hard drive is physically damaged (most likely damage to the read heads or platters... then the chances of using software to recover the data is pretty much nil. It would require specialist hardware to be able to recover bits and pieces and the costs involved would likely be very high... their initial quote of $400 does not seem outrageous.


You put your laptop in checked baggage??!? :o :o :o

First rule of air travel is never put any fragile or valuable items in checked baggage! :-\

I remember now it was carry on, I put the laptop case in the cabinet above the seat.

Yes, I believe the qt application.  When Cryptopia made their delisting coin list email announcement. I would search to see if I could find a windows download. Sometimes on this bitcointalk webste, sometimes on the official coin devlopers website and some were on this Megasync download directory. 

Yes, a week ago my brother in law took my hard drive out of the laptop and put in a device, (I forgot the manufacturer name). The cable on one end of the device was plugged into an outlet and another cable was connected to his laptop.  Using the device, his laptop recognized my hard drive but said corrupted drive unable to read.

You still haven't told us what coin was it, you've mentioned that it was being delisted by Cryptopia so I assume that it isn't Bitcoin.
Before the hardware technicalities; if the wallet happen to have a backup method like Seed, Recovery phrase and others use it to recover the coins.

That means that your HDD's PCB board is still intact (that isn't too important though); Could be the read/write pin, mechanical (spinning & control) parts which when replaced, your data will be safely recovered at the same cost of the coins  :-\.
If it is the "Disk" itself (HDD Platter), chances are slim.

Suggestion: Forget it (for now) Recover or not, you'll likely spend more dollars than the dollar equivalent of the coins.
[Just keep the HDD safe in case the particular coin's price increased exponentially]

I still think your chance to recover your "wallet file" is slim. If I were you I'd rather forget it because the amount is not that many according to what you told us.


Then what you mean is a wallet app, it's not a cold wallet. Did you store the private key/seed somewhere else? If you have it, then you just need to load it up on another wallet.

I believed the best thing he can do is to let go of those since the drive was said to be corrupted and unable to read.

I don't think he have the private keys/seed saved somewhere because if he does he wont have went to tech guy for help and user BitCryptex also told him that he can recover his wallet using the wallet seed but he didnt respond.

The Cryptopia is not opened just yet but from looking at my emails with the best of my memory right now
BVBcoin BVB - 1,418
Fuelcoin FC2 - 1,799
Quatloo QTL - 500
Wayawolf coin WW - 100
Coin 2 C2 - 1,600
Ozziecoin OZC - 39,990
Blazecoin BLZ - 7,000
Bitdeal BDL - 1,000
Magecoin MAGE - 54
Sooncoin SOON - 200
Halycon HAL - 120
Feathercoin classic FTCC - 10,000
Careercoin CAR - 50000
Litefeather classic LFTC - 200,000
The Chief Coin CHIEF - 366,960
Tiger coin TGC - 700
Sterling coin SLG - 100
Philospher stone PHS - 200
Octane 888 - 1,700
Space coin SPACE - 600
Royalties XRY - 80,000
Jedicoin JEDI - 100,000
Shrooms SHRM - 1
Most of these coins were less than $15 by time of delisting and majority were only about $5

I don't have the private keys on any of them. I didn't see any private key information on any of the coin wallet apps. Where should I have looked to find the private key?  I didn't see any 12 - 24 word code on any of the coin wallet apps, I have only see that code when I created a Binance or myetherwallet account.

My advice: keep the list of coins, keep the drive, and store it safely. If the coins are ever worth enough in the future, you can try (expensive) data recovery.

The Seed and Private Keys are shown to you when you create your wallet, you can also find them from your console tab in the bitcoin core. Considering that you don't have access to your wallet or wallet.dat file due to the malfunctioning of your drive you can t get to this information.

My guess he is not holding any backup for this because if he had this backup I'm sure this discussion is done and solved by BitCryptex as he ask this first.

Physically damaged HDD, any software recovery will never work if it's physically damaged but how about replacing on the HDD board or I mean take the disc inside from the HDD and then transfer to other extra HDD and maybe you can access the HDD without data corruption.

I'm beginning to think that you might just have downloaded a regular wallet app like Coinbase as usual Cold storage wallets will give you right away the private keys after choosing what wallet you will create. Regular wallet apps like Coinbase would just only create you wallet account along with your email and password for registration which cold storage won't do.

No one will know how to answer your question concern where you should look for in other to get the private keys or the seeds of the wallet you used when you barely mention the name of the wallet app.

if no antistatic bag is available you can use aluminum foil and wrap the drive in it.

basically you want to protect the drives electronics from static charges.

He did mention it. He said, as I understand, he's using the official qt wallet of each coin
and as we all know, there is no mnemonic seed provided by qt... just like bitcoin core
the basic way is by making backup of wallet.dat files (backupwallet) or by saving extracted private keys (dumpwallet)

I got my laptop back the other day.  He gave my hard drive back and placed it in a bag and put a new 2 tb hard drive into my laptop.  He couldn't recover the hard drive, he said it is about $450 for the expensive machine service and would have to send it to another shop.  When I asked him about the probability of recovering data with the expensive machine ($10,000+ machine), he said 90 to 95%.   

I agree with this even you still don't have the means to recover your data you must make sure that you keep your hard drive, you never know if anyone of your coins will pump a thousand times just like what happens to Bitcoin, I even read a story about a guy who lost his usb with hundreds of Bitcoins on it, so better keep up.

If your harddrive is not crypto-related stuffs you can take the risk in trying freezer method.

Put the Hardisk in a aircooled freezer (not ice type) for about 2 minutes and try to re plug it in on your PC to see if you can access your HD.

This "SOMESTIMES" works if you HD Problems is cause by clicking sound or mechanical problems.