Bitcoin Forum

Hello everyone,

Recently I completely formatted my HDD because I was having some software issues. I thought it would suffice to just write down my bitcoin address and password  somewhere, in order to log on to my wallet later on. However, I just installed MultiBit on my PC again, and I can't seem to find how I can access my old wallet with the bitcoin address+password. So my question is, is it even possible to re-gain access to my wallet this way, or should I have copied some other files for it? If it is not possible, is there still some way to retrieve the money from my wallet with just my address and password?

Thanks in advance!

Stijn

when you reformat or get a new computer, the process of backing up a wallet will you a data file that has the balance.

eg: if you are using btcqt - it would be wallet.dat or whatever you named.dat

When you want to reupload the balance, install the software and drag and drop the file located to replace the .dat file under the new one with "wallet.dat" this would be your saved balance.

Don't know where MultiBit stores its wallet file - you may be able to recover it using a deleted file recovery tool (depends on how thoroughly you formatted your hard disk).
There's a description of the files that make up your wallet at https://multibit.org/en/help/v0.5/help_fileDescriptions.html
Of course, you can recover it from your backup as well (what, you did not make regular backups? tsk tsk tsk, make backups next time...)

But if you can not recover your wallet file, your bitcoins are most likely lost.

Onkel Paul

try to recover your wallet with software recovery
and search the wallet extension on your computer
if you can't find wallet file, then i'm sorry you lost your bitcoin

You got to back up your wallet file. Only password can't help you recovery your wallet.

If you have formatted without saving your wallet.dat file usually located in yourcomputername/appdata/roaming/multibit, it will take a lot of effort to recover your coins. The wallet.dat is the file containing your private keys. Your approach right now should be immediately install a file recovery software and provided you could still see the directory, you will need the file to recover back your coins.

Have you ever write down/copy private keys from your address somewhere?
If you have it, it will easy to recover your wallet.
It won't enough if just remember address and password, it's not 3rd part wallet like blockchain.
My suggestion is look for a software which can help you to recover your wallet data. If you didn't wipe your harddisk, it still possible to recover it

The only way you can try is to recover your disk use some hack method

Sadly as many said you will need your private key/backup of wallet file.  With password you don't have anything to unlock.

If it is a lot of BTC might try to find someone to try to recover it.   But with new format it would have to be pretty lucky if those parts were able to be recovered.

If one does a disk wipe, it may not be lost unless data is write over it. Even if it's recoverable, it would take lots of money.

OP probably didn't understood how does Bitcoin work and treated it like a bank account. Private key is the thing that you need to spend your Bitcoins, not your address and wallet encryption password. Without a backup, you won't be able to access your coins as you won't be able to sign a transaction from the address.

maybe a hardware wallet is a better choice for the future?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=899253.0

Pro: you cant deleet it  :P

I've used this in the past when someone accidentally formatted an external HDD of mine:

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

It recovered most of my stuff, mainly futile photos but it could help you.

if you do not have something like private keys or backup and you just formatted the associated drive on your HDD you might have a chance of recovering your wallet by using some sort of recovery program, i've used recoverforall so far for usb so far and it worked fine for recovering deleted files

Switch off that harddisk immediately and don't do anything else to it. Switch on another computer, download and install a file recovery program and install your wiped harddisk on that computer. Scan the wiped harddisk and try to recover the wallet.dat file.

If I'm not mistaken, there is a software recovery tool available out there. Try to load it out on a different computer and recover the wallet.dat file that had been deleted when you formatted the HDD. Hope that helps.

As far as i know you can recover your data after formating you HDD using a software as long as the ''DATA ARE NOT OVER WRITTEN''. I remember once formating the worng partition while reinstalling windows and easily recovered my files/pictures/data. It took like ~3/4hours to recover all the files (was about 180gb+). So good luck trying.

Yeah also that "overwritten data" thing. As long as the HDD is the same as the time it was formatted, then you still have the chance to recover the lost data from it.

There are some handy recovery tools even for formated disks. Try downloading some newer Hirens Boot cd, you'll find plenty of useful stuff there, low level ofc. There's a chance you'll need to go to go step by step switching from one prog to another. DiskGetor data recovery is the one you could try from Windows but i would use boot cd first.

This. If you want to maximize your chance of recovering anything from your HD, don't use it anymore except read-only with appropriate file recovery tools.
I notice that OP did not post anything after the first question and didn't even login afterwards, so we're basically preaching to a brick wall...
Maybe the info will help others who are clever enough to use the forum search when they have a similar problem.

Onkel Paul

Good luck.

It's difficult, but I hope that you can find the wallet.

I think that Bitcoin wallets should warn the user if he didn't created a backup file.

This will really come down to how much BTC is in wallet. If a few might be worth doing recovery by yourself to try to get it.

For professional data recovery it will take a lot of BTC in it to make sense.

before your format hdd, dont forget to create a backup wallet.

Ouch. I learned this same lesson the same exact way. Always - ALWAYS - back up your wallet. And
make backups of your backups. In multiple locations.

I know that advice doesn't help you NOW, though. Like some of the folks before me said, there are
recovery utilities out there - hopefully they will work better for you than they did for me. I lost over
4 BTC that way, back when BTC were over $700 a pop. Yeah, it stung.

And don't forget to ask here if you have any doubts about wallet backups.

Remember: Better safe than sorry

A bitcoin address is not enough to recover your Bitcins. What you have is your public address. You need the private keys, which you don't have.

In that case you have to get your "wallet.dat" file back.
MultiBit stores it in "C:\Users\Username\App Data\Roaming\Multibit"
Try to use a recovery software and see if you can get this file back.

how can lost wallet at a moment are your not safe youre code to get back the account?
private code ?etc?

I think you can't open your old wallet without wallet.dat
You should back up your wallet before you use to fill some coins

In future if you don't want this to happen again, back-up your wallet.dat or your private keys. If that seems like a hassle to you, just use a wallet like electrum and remember it's seed.

+10

I've made a simple command line that executes every time my windoze starts:

@echo off
 xcopy /y C:\Users\Shavers\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\wallet.dat D:\Backup\BTC\
 xcopy /y C:\Users\Shavers\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin\wallet.dat \\X-PC\walletbackup\all

That makes a wallet.dat copy to local and lan disk.
What i'd like to do is to make a copy on a cloud as well but so far i haven't had any luck. At least not in this simple manner. :)

if uve used the drive to store data, there's no way to recover deleted files

try to recover your multibit wallet ( <your wallet name>.wallet ) using "icare" software and then open it with multibit.. ;)
that's all...
For more pm me?

Some wallet requires frequent backup. If you don't backup regularly, coins can be lost due to the change address(depending on your client)

You should have saved your Private Key instead of just the address and password, it should have saved you from all the mess you are stuck in.

For cloud backup you can use Google Drive.
1.Install Google Drive software and log-in.
2.Make a command to copy the wallet.dat to Google Drive folder.(Located on Desktop)
3.Google Drive will sync it automatically whenever file is modified.

This is why you always need to make backups. How much BTC would already be lost by this kind of things.

there are some programs that can still recover your erased data, even after a format c:, as long as you didn't secure erase

next time use a real back up, cold storage, even a pen drive is ok

Yes

I lost some btc like this when I first started. u should be more careful