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Hello,i had a wallet on my old pc and be mistake i send some ltc to the old one.The problem is that i dont have backup and i tried to recover some files (exodus support) told me with a program a friend suggest me the active file recovery but with no results.
the files im looking for is seed.seco and the hard drive have already used and formated one more time.

Any suggestion?or any better recovery tool to use?

**the hdd is toshiba

thnx in advance

First of all: stop using the disk... Any sector that has been overwritten is more or less lost... I've heared about 3 letter agencies that can potentially recover an overwritten sector, but for a normal guy on a normal budget, you should consider sectors that have been overwritten as lost...

I'd recommand to use dd to make a copy of all sectors on your disk before you try anything else.

Afterwards, i've heared people share success stories of recuva's recovery software...

What exactly does 'already used' mean ?
The more data is being written to the hard drive after the file has been deleted, the lower the chance of recovering it is.

How big is the hard drive ? And how much do you guess have been written to it after deleting the file ?

Also, if you have already used some recovery program, tell us the name. We can only suggest you 'better' tools if we know which tools you have tried.


The first step to recover usually is to stop using the hard drive immediately.
Then, create an image (better: multiple) of the drive (e.g. using dd) and perform your recovery on the images (preferably on a fresh image for each try).

Hello thnx for ur answer.
i have use active file recovery as i told and the hard drive is used for more than 5 months + now i think it have many bad sectors.
the use is too light and i had find the file but not work correct so i believe maybe with a better recovery tool i can find the the .seco file.
is it possible to recover the backup on exodus wallet via resend it to my email ??

hard drive specs:
toshiba 500gb MQ01ABD050

Hello thnx for ur answer,
i have stop using it now because of too many bad sectors but it was in use for more than 5 months after the format.i think i had used recuva too but active file recovery i think its more proffessional .
maybe u remeber the name of the company ??

Hello,thnx for ur answer,
i have checked the email i use but nothing inside,the 12 words i must have it in a backup for an old mobile maybe not.i mean if is any way from exodus to resend me the backup email link to the first registered email so i can recover it from there.
Anyone knows ?

Which company?
That being said: if you've used the HD for 5 months and it already has a lot of bad sectors, i don't think the odds are in your favour here...

I'd personally suggest you to use dd (like i said in my first post) to save as much data as you can, then start looking for the seed phrase or an other backup method... If nothing works, it doesn't hurt asking for a quote from a professional disk recovery company... The odds of recovering a file on a broken disk that has been used for at least 5 months are small...

If you get a quote from a professional file recovery company, it's up to you to decide wether the costs outweigh the benefits... Also, i'd suggest finding a "no cure, no pay" company... That way you can minimise your costs in case they can't help you either.

EDIT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_erasure#Number_of_overwrites_needed

If i'm not mistaking, the department of defence usually overwrites a disk with 0's, then with 1's then with random data... At this point, nobody (not even a 3 letter agency) should be able to recover any data.

Depending on the usage of the disk in the last 5 months, several sectors *might* have been overwritten numerous times. On the other hand, if you just used the disk to backup a couple of very small files and never touched it afterwards, you might have a fighting chance.

thnx !the name of a company i ask was wrong answer.

5 months in use has a high probability of overwriting the erased data.
Not saying that it wouldn't be worth a try, but i wouldn't expect too much from it.

Contacting their support (https://support.exodus.io/article/93-how-can-i-contact-exodus) might be more helpful, since there already has been cases where people got access to their wallet again after emailing the support with the email address used for their backup.
They might be able to resend you the backup link to your email (set as backup mail in your exodus wallet). If you then still know your password, you'll be able to access it. 

thnx !I remember the pass!im gonna send them an email now.I had talked with a support on slack but we had found no solution.

Unforetunatly they cant resend me the backup email link.

If you found the file but are unable to recover with given softwares, I highly doubt any other software will recover it. Btw you did a deep scan with recuva, yeah?
If you are looking for a companies for professional recovery, then google: Data recovery center/service. They will cost a lot too but prices may be different in countries, it even may be beneficial to send your hdd with post but it must be extra protected.

thnx for ur answer,

the cryptos inside is not a big ammount so a data recovery service maybe is not a good choise for me now.so maybe i will try one more time with latest version of active file recovery and recuva .

STOP!

The program you're looking for is TestDisk

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk


I've used it to successfully recover gigabytes of files in burned up disks. It's free and open source.



Don't mess with your disk, don't re-format it again. Don't write any files to it.

Using TestDisk you can look through and recover what is still left there to recover.


Recovering the whole disk, depending on size will take more than 24 hours so you need to be patient. If you choose to recover the max amount (if the drive was full and you recover 500GB it could be as fast as 8 hours.


Edit: You don't need a third party to recover your data for you, but if you have a trusted friend who's competent with using advanced computer programs sit down with him, offer him some money, some food, some drinks something and let him help you with the data recovery.

Hi there! I recommend you to check out the file recovery tool from https://www.diskinternals.com/uneraser/ I am pretty sure that you will find it helpful and working in your case. I had such troubles too some time ago, and this thing literally saved my life...

Not sure if any Data Recovery programs could help you with your problem as this will only help you at best to retrieve some bits and pieces of your hdd and there is no guarantee that the file your are looking for will be one of the things recovered. Even if it is one of the files that is hidden and somehow recovered chances are it is compromised or corrupted. You can try, but I doubt you will be successful on recovering that file.

thnx for ur answers!

Did you managed to get the bitcoins back?

hello.my hdd crashed so i cant even open it.the last proggram testdisk looking good if u have similar problem.i also tried to contact hotmail support to find the deleted backup link but the recovered emails was till january 2018 and the delete date was previous.

I ll let u know if i recover it

So i take it you didn't follow my initial advice and clone the disk straight away? If you did follow my advice, you should have a clone image of your original disk, so it shouldn't matter if it crashed...

I really hope you created an image. mocacinno wasn't the only one who advised it:




This is a necessary step. Simply because recovery softwares often mess up the data on your drive.

If you didn't do this and tried to perform recovery on your original drive, noone can help you if it now is completely broken.

If you can't access it know anymore, your chances are pretty much 0 of recovering anything now.

i didnt make the image as u told me because the hdd was already crashed i open tha case and the plates looking good so ill try to check the head on hdd.
thnx for ur advises!

i ll let u know my future moves.

I'm sorry to hear this, but did you really say you opened up the disk's case and look at the physical cases? I don't think that's a very good idear... Things like that should be done in a cleanroom by a technical person that is trained and has experience with dissasembling harddisks... Especially spinning disks are sensitive to a lot of environment factors...

And it's not because the physical plates look good that they're not corruped...

Yeah HDDs are very sensitive, cloning it in an image with one of these external tools that I think forensics use would have been more sane than opening it. Also don't move it around too much.
The wallet file is small so there is some hope that the sectors aren't overwritten but I wouldn't count on it.

Also the problem of hiring some data recovering company is that I would be too paranoid that they tell you "it's unrecoverable sorry" but in reality they actually managed to get your coins and in a few years you see them move.