Bitcoin Forum

so a few years back i had a few bitcoin on a hard drive but today i tried to access the harddrive and i ended up spilling a glass full of water all over it and now it wont boot up.

what are my options?

Technically Bitcoins are not stored in your hard drives, it's just in the blockchain and it always be so the wallet and private keys are just the path ways to access them.

You can recover your Bitcoin very easily if you have access to the private keys which you are supposed to keep secured.

If you don't have keys then you need to recover the wallet.dat file from that HDD which is expensive as well as doesn't give you any guarantee that the recovery process will be success.

I don't know if this story is true or not, but as far as I know as long as you don't scratch the HDD platter the data on it should still be accessible by taking it to a technician who specializes in HDD repair. Usually they will replace the shorted part so that your data can be accessed. The repair costs vary depending on the damage, but for a short circuit like this it shouldn't be too expensive.
And as a precaution, you have to pay attention to how they access your HDD, because they might duplicate your data.

Calculate how much bitcoin you own in USD(or your local currency) terms, then decide if it's worth paying decent sums of money for a file recovery service. It might cost a good amount of money.

After your calculations, if you discover that you can afford the service and still make some good profit, you can seek a reputable recovery service provider. It will not be also a bad idea to get the service of legal professional if you have a good number of coins. There is a need for a legal document to be signed that states the terms and conditions of service. Nobody can be trusted with money.

I just want to ask you dude, how did you lose access to your Bitcoin? Shouldn't you know your private key for the Bitcoin address you mentioned? unless you misplace the private key you have for the Bitcoin address you are hiding. or Except it's not. if it was hacked, was the address you used for bitcoin hacked that you put the address on your hard drive?

Because even if your hard drive has a problem, as long as you have your private key, you will still be able to open that account with your bitcoin for sure. Unless you haven't saved your private here in your Bitcoin address. I also don't understand in your post if your Bitcoin is in a cold or hardware wallet?

1) Stop using that harddrive or try to connect it to any power source, put it under the sun to dry and make sure all the water has dried up.
2) go to the nearest specialized store and ask them to help you make this disk work.

If it was just water spilled on it and you have the wallet file or seed or you remember your password, there is a great chance of getting your coins back.

If the damage is significant, some specialists can help you, but in any case, stop using it or connect it to any power source.

The optical drive of it could still be done by some experts but you know that it's going to cost you money. And much worse if there's really a balance in there like a hefty amount of Bitcoin.

You should only get those recovery experts that you trust because if those are the experts that you don't know then they may create a scene that it's totally empty.

Because you have to tell them what you are up to and why you need to recovery what's inside the HDD.

all my private keys was stored on the hard drive

this is why people should always keep a physical copy of their private keys and preferably several copies of it.

anyway, Husires's suggestions seem like the best options you have. just another suggestion, when drying your hard drive up, try using silica gel patches(if you have them), they are great at absorbing moisture.

It doesn't sound like this happened, are you saying that you store Bitcoin in a wallet for the past years and you don't have your recovery seed written down somewhere? anyways, since you poured water on something that has your Bitcoin in it makes me feel you are not responsible, You can't keep that Hard Disk safe and you don't also have your private key? Are you for real?

Dry the hard disk first and try again, if it doesn't work , go to any PC repairer store and stay will that person to fix your hard disk or at least recover the files on the disk, Also how much Bitcoin do you have in this Hard disk?  Is it worth much?

It’s just misconception sometimes when people say they have bitcoin on drives, the thing on these drives are your private keys which are basically your only access to bitcoin. So it is actually the private key they loss when this drives got damage. Even on hardware wallet it is still private keys on it.


Then you might have a seed phrase somewhere to help recover the wallet ( that is if the wallet wasn’t created before seed phrase introduction, like before 2012 or 2013). If you don’t have then just find a repairer for hard drives.

It's really very sad to say that you aren't much responsible for your assets. Why you haven't keep your backup in a safe place? Is that fund wasn't much worthy? The last hope is that ou may try to repair it from an expert who is trusted too.

Maybe you lost a little amount of Bitcoin. Though the fund is big or little it's a must to keep backup in a safest place. It's a good lesson for everyone who aren't much aware about their security or backup. Be conscious about your wallet and make your funds Secured.

Haven't you ever heard/seen that electronics and water are not the best of friends? Such a situation is incomprehensible to me, because I never have any liquids near my computer or any other electronics.


I recommend that you seek professional help from people who are engaged in professional data recovery, and considering that you have very sensitive data, you can ask to be present during the procedure (some offer this option). Of course, as some have already mentioned, you should first calculate whether it is worth saving the data considering their value in relation to the cost of the procedure - although I would note that you should also take into account the possible value of those BTC in the future.

You can read more at this link -> https://computertech.com/blog/hard-drive-water-damaged

So if that's the case then why not follow the recovery service professional suggestion? You cannot get any help here since people sympathy cannot do anything so best to seek a good skilled personnel nearby on your place and try to ask if there's a chance that you can recover your file so that you can get back all your keys and other important documents you need.

This is hard situation if this story is true since its mentally draining especially if you get worried for huge funds lost due to that incident.

It is security wise. We should stop doing things belong to our childhood or teenager hood.

Eating and drinking when we are working with a computer, a laptop are simply unwise and it's very risky for physical damages on digital devices. Even we turn off our computer or laptop, like you said we should not put any water, liquid around our devices.

OP has no other choice if he can not recover data by himself but using third party data recovery is risky. They can say we fail to recover your data but in fact they got it successfully and stole that wallet file and got access to bitcoin. We can not know what they do after we pass our devices and drives to them for data recovery.

Hopefully OP will recover his wallet successfully and bitcoin in that wallet will be intact. However, this accident reminds OP the importance of wallet backups. If you have a Bitcoin wallet, back it up before you use it for receiving, storing and sending bitcoin.

Perfect solution, OP you really have to make this calculations if the amount you owe on the wallets is worth going for a recoverable service or not, this will actually help you not to get an additional lost added with a wasted efforts when you opted in for what is not worth it, but the question i may like to ask here is where can one get a reliable hardware wallet recovery and maintenance team's help and not get scammed through such means, could it be from the source he bought the hardware wallet from or there are tech expertise experienced in hardware wallet maintenance which he can request their service?

As mentioned by forum members that have posted before me,you should check the cost of paying a professional recover service to help you get those files from your hard disc. If it worth it then go ahead,but if it doesn't,forget about it and hodli your bitcoin for a very long time when the price worth seeking for a professional recovery personnel  to help you get the files. This should be a lesson for since you chose to play over important thing by bringing water close to your system. Try drying the water first and see if it works. You failed to back up your wallet and have put yourself into worries.

I guess you'll have to say goodbye to your bitcoins because if that hard drive can't be fixed or the contents of it not recovered in any way, you might as well start moving on. Also, follow what @mk4 said, is the recovery worth the effort and time, if not then don't bother and just be better at safekeeping your wallet. Also, make a habit of checking if your electronic devices are in the vicinity of water.

As far as I know, many people are quite negligent in storing their private key or seed phrase, I mean, they store it right on the hard drive on the computer and they trust that it will be safe there. Many people have fallen into the same situation as the OP and they completely lost access to their assets.

But the hard drive spilled water is not too difficult to solve. As long as OP takes it to data rescue experts, I think everything will be solved. But the problem is how many bitcoins he has because data rescue doesn't come cheap either.

I personally know that some data saving services offer an option for the client to be present in the data rescue procedure, and I wrote that in the previous post. I suppose that OP can ask for this type of service if he is ready to pay more, and I believe that one glass of water could not destroy the data on the disk - because that genius who is looking for his HDD in a pile of garbage for ten years still claims that data can be saved.

Just like the other comments have mentioned, it is not on your hard drive, it is stored on Blockchain and you can get it back with your private keys. When you're going through that process of storing it on your hard drive, I would like to believe that you had the options of setting up either 12 or 24 key phrase for the wallet, that you can use to access them from anywhere.

In case of next time, try to be careful when you're dealing with things that has to do with your money like this, I don't know what made you spill water on a hard drive that is holding something like Bit[Suspicious link removed]d luck with recovering it though.

Well you only problem right now is to find a way to repair your damages, in terms of your wallet, I believe you can still have access to it.

Except I am missing something here, you have some Bitcoin in your wallet right, if you have the seed phrase to that wallet then you actually do not have to worry about access to the wallet .

Also the way you treat your device can say alot about the person I think you should learn how to secure your seed phrase especially.

The lifeblood of Bitcoin is the private key.  You can easily access your wallet if you have the private key. And if not, in that case you just need to recover your HDD. It's quite expensive and how much it will cost depends on the condition of your HDD. So whether you should spend money to recover it depends on how much Bitcoin you had in your wallet and how important it is to you. So try to do what is best according to the condition

To be more accurate, the most important thing in non custodial wallet is seed phrase because seed phrase is consist of many private key. When you only save the private key, it's mean you can only access some of your coins, not all.

Not only expensive, it might be impossible and there's a chance the technician who recover his HDD will access his wallet since he know the private key or seed phrase.

There are many tutorials on Youtube or Google how to recover a hard drive that does not boot but that sometimes can not be done with your current situation, but for me is his choice to take to a professional handyman in this field and ask if this hard drive can be recovered or not?

Later the repairman will check and tell you the problem he is facing, but I hope it can be restored.

Besides, never be careless because it has assets in it and make a copy of seed phrase on paper and keep it in a safe place.

If you have no problem telling the amount - then maybe someone can recommend you the appropriate course of action. If the value of bitcoins you have is not much ^{[eg less than $ 100],} then forget about high paying services like file recovery services or something like that. But if your bitcoin value is big enough - then you can take that approach.

Is this supposed to still be so much of a problem if you have the private keys or seed phrase to the blockchain wallet that contains your bitcoins.?
For me personally. I've never had bitcoin stored on a hard drive, so it's pretty difficult for me to understand what the recovery process is like, but I do have bitcoin stored on non-custodial blockchain wallet which I access through my pc or mobile device most of the time, I don't know what the difference is from this type of storage and storing on a hard drive.

I assumed your keys are also in that hard drive too! if yes then you have to hire someone special who can extract data for you and it is very easy task. I have seen a lot of videos in which experts have advance software which can even restore the data from corrupted device and yours only corrupted due to water. Which in my POV is not that big issue.

But still, you have to hire someone with whom you can trust your money. Because if that person become greedy then the access to your wallet back doesn't matter anymore. So, try to be careful or you could do that by yourself too but i think you might lack the gear like hardware and software equipment's. So, hire a professional for this and it could be restored easily.

Don't you have a backup of your private key somewhere other than the hard drive?
Oh shit. Chances are you won't be able to anymore if the hard drive has been exposed to water. Try drying it with a hairdryer. If that doesn't work, please take it to a service person.

Private keys or seed phrases must be backed up in several places to avoid risks like the one you are experiencing.

If you failed to save your seed phrase, there's no other way except recover your hard drive. Your best option is to search for a reliable computer or hard drive repair store. It appears you may have accidentally caused the damage to the drive yourself, making you quite unlucky. Nevertheless, remain composed and explore the possibilities of repairing it. Even if you cannot access the data directly, there might be a chance to transfer your data to another hard drive to regain access.

Why not back up that key? Any hard disk can be damaged especially with your carelessness that made it unintentionally, but it's your own fault.
Going to the hard disk service officer's place maybe it can still be recovered by them, think about the service fee as others say is it worth the bitcoin in it?
This is a lesson for you, at least in the future don't ever put all important data on the hard drive what with the bitcoin private key, like someone else's suggestion to keep a few backups I think there are many to save that way.

Today that you plan to retrieve your Bitcoin is when you spill water on the hard drive? It doesn't make any meaning, this look like something you just think and write, a fake event that never took place, be honest.

Every non-custodial wallet has private key or recovery seed, do you leave that in the hard disk as well?

If you buy your Bitcoin yourself and you set up your Bitcoin wallet, and you don't write down your recovery seed, then how the hell did you activate your wallet?

I can remember that as you open a new Bitcoin wallet, it will give you your recovery seed and the next page will ask you to verify, you will need to type the seeds back to confirm that you have really written them down.

Am I the only one thinking that this story is fake?

Stop trying to turn it on as a first step. Every time you try to reboot, you risk making things worse. Even if you're staring at the prospect of losing a fortune, which is a scary thought, it's not the end of the world.

The hefty costs of hiring data recovery experts may be justified in this case. Getting this to them as quickly as possible is of the utmost importance. They have their own sterile environments, or "clean rooms," and function like surgeons in the digital world.

However, you should expect the worse. Sometimes, even with the most advanced tools and knowledgeable technicians, data cannot be recovered. This is a hard lesson to learn, but protecting your digital assets is essential.

We got people out there that are able to repair or at the very least retrieve data from spent or broken hard drives plus technically the wallet's not entirely on your hard drive especially if it's saved on a program like Electrum where you can retrieve it using the private keys. Sucks to be you if those same keys are saved within that hard drive and you can't remember it anymore. But yeah technology's pretty fucking advanced nowadays that you can tinker with old hard drives and access the files/data that's stored in it even if it's already broken. Just need to find the right guy for the job and you should be good to go. That's at the very least considering you are telling us the truth, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

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If you use a wallet software, on your devices, you will have two ways to recover. Accessing the wallet file with or without password, that depends on whether your wallet file is encrypted or not encrypted with password. A more easily way to recover it is to have a wallet seed or a private key which you can use anytime to import it without needs to have a wallet file password.

Because any digital file, any physical device can have technical problems and become unusable, you must back up your wallets with wallet seeds and private keys. You will always have ability to recover your wallets with such backups. Relying on hard drives, USBs or wallet files are more risky

If by a few bitcoin being stored on that hard drive you actually mean full bitcoins then you are in deep trouble, however there are services which can recover information from damaged hard drive units, ask for the costs and if the costs are lower than the amount of coins you have there then go for it, as at this point it does not seem as if you have too much of a choice, what I cannot help to ask myself is how someone can be that irresponsible when they have so much money at stake? I have several backups of my seed words and sometimes even that does not seem like enough to me and yet it seems you had no backup at all.

OP you just got a red trust on your profile for spreading fake news to scam donations, I am wondering how you expect people to believe you and your stories, if you spilled water on your HDD then go get your seed phrases where you kept them, or are you going to claim that you don't store that somewhere safe either?

If water spilled on an HDD you must not connect it, find a way to dry it first and secondly even if the HDD don't spin anymore it's still repairable, a diode on the HDD panel might have died, this happened to me and I was able to fixed it because I have few HDD laying around then and I changed the board/panel of the HDD will another and it worked.

When exposed to water, there is still a chance that it can be read although it is a little difficult or heavy when entering the access process.
Dry it first and wait a few hours.
From my experience, I was probably in a lucky position. This problem can still be solved just to copy the data by trying to replace the VCB.
If you don't know how to fix it yourself, I suggest like most of the advice that has been given. Take it to a qualified service center in the hope that it can be repaired.

This only applies to hard drives that have been exposed to water and are in need of immediate attention or repair.

Don't keep your private key and/or seed phrase in one place.
Back up the seed phrase in several places to be able to retrieve it when lost.
Storing private keys and seed phrases in one place can be a big problem that cannot be solved.

Have you literally tried to access your hard drive by trying to pry it open with a screwdriver while holding a glass of water in your hand? :) I can't imagine how it was possible to spill water at that moment. You never know what funny cases can come true.

Ok, let's say there is a hard drive with bitcoin that failed due to contact with water. What can be done?

You are not an expert in this, therefore, the idea of self-repair should be immediately discarded. The only right decision is to turn to professional specialists involved in the recovery of hard drives / data from drives in the location closest to you.

Although I have absolutely no idea how your drive could fail, because their cases are sealed, unless you spilled water on a device connected to the network. In this case, other components of the PC would fail, and not the disk. Although, with proper skill, the disk can also be broken.

One of the alternative routes that you can take is to go to a store that provides service or can get your hard drive working again. I don't know how many Bitcoins you have stored on the hard drive, at least this incident has made you feel you have made a big mistake for storing the private key on the hard drive.
One way to make the wallet accessible again with the private key holder, there is no other way to access the wallet without the private key. The forum has discussed how to store private keys safely, storing private keys on a hard drive is not recommended because there is no guarantee of security there.

It's amusing how many people are losing their BTC by spilling water, losing gadgets, ruining hardware, forgetting passwords etc. It's all judging by these forum threads. I suspect most of them are made up to pump up post count and maybe even earn some merits. It just looks really suspicious the guy spilled water on his hdd (or pc not really clear from the OPs post) on THE VERY SAME DAY he decided to check on his stash? I mean cmon...  ;D

The only solution to this is to dig it up with an expert. Let's say you saved it in a text file, then you'll need to find and hire a recovery service for all documents or all files on your drive. Also, don't ever mention that you have bitcoin or that your purpose is to recover your bitcoin wallet, as we don't know if someone you hired will gain access to your wallet. Though you can try to buy a hard drive enclosure and plug it into your PC if it works, if not, you don't have any choice but to do the above.

I guess that teaches you to make backups.

Seriously though: I don't believe any of this.

It's hard to verify whether the OP's story is real or just made-up. But it is true that many people store original phrases and information right on their computers. Believe it or not, my cousin is not very computer savvy, and he's only been in the market for a few months. Although his assets are not too large, but important data such as passwords and seed phrases...he stores them right on his D drive. I gave advice on that, but he didn't believe there would be any problem. But he is stubborn, and I don't want to waste my time with such people even though he is my relative. I like to let him experience it so he can figure it out, even though I know he will lose money because of that stubbornness.

I also don't believe any of it because I think that @OP just made up the story to get some good replies on his thread and nothing else. He first said that he has spilled a full glass of water on his hard drive and because of that it stopped working, and I don't think that makes any sense at all.

@OP, you should also mentioned that how you spilled the glass of water on your hard drive because most of the time the Hard Drive is fit inside a desktop or laptop, then how have to directly spilled water over it without harming those systems? Now, please don't say that you had taken that drive out of the desktop or laptop because that also doesn't make sense.

However, if you story is not made up then you should take your Hard drive to an expert, and he/she will fix it within few hours without much issue. The data of the hard drive is stored on the platters and the platters are resistant to water I guess. You don't need a recovery expert, but a hard drive technician who can repair such drives.

I still can't trust the story, but if there is any truth in your story then read my answer fully, and I'm quite sure your problem will be solved.

Yes, there are many stories from new accounts that are meant to earn merit and that is why it is very difficult to believe these stories.
I wonder why a person wouldn't keep his bitcoin wallet private key in a safe place where he has bitcoins in his wallet. Although the story is not believable I would advise him to contact a good recovery team who can recover his hard drive through various recovery processes.

The reason that I don't believe this story is if I fall into this case. The first thing that comes to my mind is to take it to a hardware repair and data recovery store to quickly save my hard drive rather than going to the forums looking for advice from others. Because there is no better solution in this case and I believe anyone using a computer would do it, rather than going to a bitcoin forum for advice. The story is really hard to believe although I don't think the OP is trying to find merit as many say.

Let him learn, anyone who doesn't consider what others are saying like learning the hard way, you have already do your part so he can't say you never warned him.

It's foolishness seeing people still storing their private key and recovery seed on a hard disk this days, those things are not reliable at all, I installed a new OS on Hard disk and after going through all the problems of entering the BIOS and flashing OS using a software, the hard disk failed to work and it was working perfectly before.

Hard disks can't be trusted, they give up at any time, this is why writing your phrases in a book is far more safer than leaving it in a hard disk, even NVME 2.0 drives can stop working too, this types are said to be better than hard disks because they don't spin using disks in them but still I don't recommend storing your keys this way.