Bitcoin Forum

I burned out a geforce 8800 GT in the old days,

funny story short am trying to recover my old hard drive and look for my lost wallet any idea which softwares i need to search for and what bitcoin wallet was it ?

i remember my pc used to work 24 hours for 3 months then it was burned out

any help would be appreciated i got 400GB to look into full of files

i don't remember the pool or the miner or the wallet nor the seed xD

TRUE STORY!! HELP F1 F1

the only thing i used to back up to the other partition was Desktop and documents i know its a hopeless case but please don't troll me

Warning: Do not entertain PMs requesting private keys, seeds or file copies especially from newbies. If possible, keep the discussion public.

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Recovering the "undetermined amount" of mined bitcoins from an old (wiped?) disk depends on the available information you can remember.
But looking at the OP, it's as good as blind searching.

First of all, if it came from Mining, there's no guarantee that you've successfully hit a block (for the old solo mining) or configured the mining software and pool account the right way.
Next, you should at least know the (worker) bitcoin address or the wallet where it belongs.
Lastly:
You can't solve anything with this.

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Start by, using a recovery software if the disk was previously erased and look for file names starting with wallet, default_wallet, wallet.dat and something similar.

thank you a lot for ur reply, this is exactly what i need, i don't remember the old mining softwares, just GUI miner maybe there was something else,
also i don't remember which wallets i used so i am trying all possibilities.

if its possible to tell me all the possible miners and wallet names i should look for from that time ?

yes it was recovered i did that easily and its working but honestly don't know what to look for

Since the files on the disk should be still there, first you should search for keywords like wallet.dat or multibit or miner.
First 2 are for info about possible wallets. If you find wallets, please work only with copies or keep backups.
Something that also crossed my mind, but I don't know how true it is, is that you may have not withdrawn your Bitcoins from the mining pool and then, although your chances are not great, you should look in the config of the miner and see what pool did you use.

One (rather obvious) thing that hasn't been mentioned by previous posters: if you're sure you mined some BTC, and either the wallet file or at least the pool's url + username are stored somewhere on your harddrive, please CLONE your drive before you start working on it.

Buy a drive of equal size (or bigger) as the one storing the crucial information, plug the "important" drive + the empty drive in a PC, boot from a different medium and clone the important drive to the empty drive.
An alternative can be to plug the "important" disk into a pc or laptop, use an external usb disk of equal size or more and boot from a bootable linux usb stick.

If you use a linux bootable usbstick, you can use dd to clone drives...

Some information:
create a bootable linux usbstick: https://unetbootin.github.io/
a guide on cloning with dd (the first one that popped up in google): https://www.opentechguides.com/how-to/article/centos/171/linux-disk-clone.html

By cloning your "important" disk first, you make sure that even if things go wrong, and you mess everything up, you still have all the data you had in the fist place, so you can at least start over from the same point as you are in right now...

The most important step probably is to follow mocacinno's advice.. clone your disk !!

A recovery software might damage the filesystem / files on your hard drive. It is always better to make an identical copy (to work on it).
Never try anything on the original drive. Make an image -> Work on the image. If you broke your image, delete it, clone your drive again, and go on using the new image.


The probability of recovering missing files depends on the usage of the disk after you have abandoned mining.
Did you use the disk frequently ? If so, the chances are pretty low.
Did the disk just lay around somewhere ? Chances would be high in this scenario.


I'd start with some keyword searches (e.g. wallet.dat, wallet, core, bitcoin, bitcoind, satoshi, ...). This would be the fastest/easiest approach.
If this doesn't work, you might use a fresh image for pywallet (https://github.com/jackjack-jj/pywallet (https://github.com/jackjack-jj/pywallet)). Pywallet also has a relatively good chance to find old wallet files on a disk (please only with your image, never with the original drive!).


Feel free to keep us updated. We'll gladly help where we can.

Hi, i would like to help you.
I am a forensic expert and what you are doing i simply my daily work.
I am dutch don't know if the NL in your name reffers to the netherlands ;)
however as in the thread is said you first need to make a backup/image.
I personally would not recommand you DD cause if you do not exactly know what you are doing you could overwrite your disk(with the btc on it)
I would advise you to use FTK imager and make an .E01 backup https://accessdata.com/product-download/ftk-imager-version-4.2.0
it's a simple visual program. If you did this and you want my help please DM me. Next step is autopsy :)
good luck for now

am afraid of that thing as well, i remember GUI MINER, which keeps crossing to my mind, i hope the pool i chose didn't exit scam and it pay automatically i don't need to withdraw manually,

i looked into my hard-drive with programs that bring back deleted files didn't find anything yet :( , there is one external i am looking for which should have a back-up of everything i ever had CROSS FINGERS

WoW thank you guys for the nice replays all of you,

i just did 2 things copy all data to my laptop using External usb hardrive mount ( Copy + Paste ) and tried to recovery search using EaseUS data recovery and recuva, but didn't recover or write anything on the hard drive

now i will follow ur steps and Clone my hard-drive and check Jack pywallet.

thank you a lot gentlemen.

Well, this couldn't have worked.
Simple copy/pasting only copies files 'registered' by the file system.

When files are being deleted, they are not really 'taken off the drive'. The space where they ware saved is being released instead.

Therefore you either need to (1) work on the original drive (NOT recommended!) or (2) on an image of the drive (recommended).




Keep us updated. For cloning you might want to boot a linux live distro and use dd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)).

I used FTK imager 4.2.0 to clone the hard drive just managed to finish one, i made 2 copies .E01 and dd don't know the difference but better to take precautions

now i downloaded Autopsy 4.9.0 for windows with GUI and started examining the 'evidence' .E01 still under process analyzing files

You will have to recover your hard disk, try this software:

https://www.minitool.com/data-recovery-software/free-for-windows.html

You probably used a pool, and it was probably slushpool (https://slushpool.com). Try to login with an email you used at that time. Sometimes they can have details that help you remember some other place that you may have kept your keys. Or at least how much you mined. It may also be that in this old email you may have kept the keys to the wallets. They are small files and most of the time we make several copies.

i already sent them an e-mail to support hope they will help.

which files should i look for in my hard-drive ? any idea ?

OP doesn't say he formatted his hard drive or deleted wallet files so IDK why people are advising the use of data recovery software.

@ALANL look for the data directory of popular wallets. For instance bitcoin core https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory . IDK of any other wallet apps that have been around since 2010-11.

yes i formatted my drive ( C: ) but i always keep copies of my old files in alternative drive

i already contacted support at slushpool with all my previous e-mails there was no account made, maybe i used another popular pool

i know its a bit hard as i don't have many inputs

If you go here you can find a list of Bitcoin mining pools and it gives the dates in which they launched, you may be able to use this to eliminate pools which didnt exist when you were mining.

hope it helps:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools