Bitcoin Forum

I had a scare this morning.

My computer has been acting up a lot,  random freezing -> shuts down -> defaults to bios  and I can't get back unless I shut the comp down and wait a while.     

So this time I get prompted to repair windows and refresh.    I thought I had all my wallets backed up + private keys stored offline      Well, turns out I didn't have 2 of them.

Windows wipes out all of my wallets, deletes web browsers..etc. 

After playing with a file recovery program with no luck,  I found the answer!       Windows created  "windows.old".     I was able to open that and go to  users/appdata/roaming where all the old wallet data was.    Copied the files over to the fresh windows and was able to recover my wallets!  PHEW!   


I also went to the appdata/local folder and copied the google folder and recovered all my information for chrome.


So if something like that ever happens to you -  you might get lucky and be able to recover your wallets.        But make it easy on yourself and make sure you've backed up your wallets first.     More importantly,  back up your wallets to separate places like a USB drive and or a separate partition on your hard-drive.     

it's good that you share this, crazy to imagine how much crypto must've been lost through the years simply due to people misplacing their stuff!
i recommend hardware wallets but many choses not to do so, and then it's just a matter of failure/misplacement over time that ultimately leads to total loss.
or worse, some type of virus for those who store it digitally/unencrypted.


what did you store in chrome? metamask?

I usually prefer to back up more than 2 places so that I don't have to experience such kind of moments. I highly recommend to back up your wallet if you want a safe and secured storage.

Yeah -  I think I have 3-4 copies between flash drives and a portable hd.      I've had everything backed up,  but over the last few months I've gotten into a few other projects and didn't back up the wallets/save them other places.    I really need to go through and make sure everything is up to date and take one of the flash drives to my safe deposit box.


Chrome was mostly just bookmarks and such.   I do have metamask, but I have that backed up.

I'm really glad I found a way to get back to old data.     Figured it'd be good to let other's know about it, and it's always a good reminder to back up wallets.

Just want to add that the folder (windows.old) will automatically deleted by Windows after a month or less (iirc) so recovery must be done right away in case of such circumstances. 

For let's say no time to dig up thing on the old folder, people can also backed it up to an external drive (although it consumed much). Not just for recovering wallets or files but people can also use this folder as source when reverting back to their previous OS.

You've got a real scary situation there, mate, you gut lucky this time. So I'm sure that this is a big lesson for you. I guess you only not to back it up in like usb or something, but you need to paper back up as well. Made copies of your privatekey have it printed and store it to different places, just a tip.