Recovery

[ratiobitcoin]

Hi there,

as far as i know there are two ways to recover one's btcm first: having the private key, second: getting the wallet.dat - right?

i don't have access to the private key, but i do have access to the hard drive, the wallet.dat was on (althought deleted, might be overwritten, might be not).
what ways do i have to
a) recover the wallet.dat
b) get access to my btc again?

i do have access to a linux (ubuntu), windows (7 or 10) and mac (current version ios) system.

thanks in advance.

[TryNinja]

as far as i know there are two ways to recover one's btcm first: having the private key, second: getting the wallet.dat - right?

i don't have access to the private key, but i do have access to the hard drive, the wallet.dat was on (althought deleted, might be overwritten, might be not).
what ways do i have to
a) recover the wallet.dat
b) get access to my btc again?

That's right. If you manage to get your wallet.dat file back, you can recover your wallet.

You can try a recovery software like Recuva or EaseUS.

[ratiobitcoin]

as far as i know there are two ways to recover one's btcm first: having the private key, second: getting the wallet.dat - right?

i don't have access to the private key, but i do have access to the hard drive, the wallet.dat was on (althought deleted, might be overwritten, might be not).
what ways do i have to
a) recover the wallet.dat
b) get access to my btc again?

That's right. If you manage to get your wallet.dat file back, you can recover your wallet.

You can try a recovery software like Recuva or EaseUS.

thank you for both of your links. are both programs able to detect and recover wallet.dat files or do i have to make a special configuration or install plugins? i remember using recuva once a few years ago. back than it only recovered pictures, office and .txt files.

[TryNinja]

thank you for both of your links. are both programs able to detect and recover wallet.dat files or do i have to make a special configuration or install plugins? i remember using recuva once a few years ago. back than it only recovered pictures, office and .txt files.

Just choose to scan for "All Files", select the directory of your HD and search for it (checkmark Deep Scan for better results). When it ends, look for your wallet.dat file.

[ratiobitcoin]

thank you for both of your links. are both programs able to detect and recover wallet.dat files or do i have to make a special configuration or install plugins? i remember using recuva once a few years ago. back than it only recovered pictures, office and .txt files.

Just choose to scan for "All Files", select the directory of your HD and search for it (checkmark Deep Scan for better results). When it ends, look for your wallet.dat file.

nice thank you!

[jackg]

thank you for both of your links. are both programs able to detect and recover wallet.dat files or do i have to make a special configuration or install plugins? i remember using recuva once a few years ago. back than it only recovered pictures, office and .txt files.

Just choose to scan for "All Files", select the directory of your HD and search for it (checkmark Deep Scan for better results). When it ends, look for your wallet.dat file.

nice thank you!

Ease US can recognise .dat file signatures as far as I can remember from when I used them.

ENSURE nothing is written to the drive from now on if possible, recover it to a different drive, run the program from a differnt drive...

[ratiobitcoin]

one more question:
I've given it a first try using recuva. recuva has recovered a lot of files, some of them are archives with only numbers as names, some are different types of document formats.

1) will the wallet.dat be a .dat file, so i can easily detect it, or could it be a archive file or something like that?
2) what is the fastest way to detect the .dat file from the recovered files without checking every file by hand?

@jackg
thank you for your feedback regarding ease us. will give it a try if recuva fails.

[jackg]

one more question:
I've given it a first try using recuva. recuva has recovered a lot of files, some of them are archives with only numbers as names, some are different types of document formats.

1) will the wallet.dat be a .dat file, so i can easily detect it, or could it be a archive file or something like that?
2) what is the fastest way to detect the .dat file from the recovered files without checking every file by hand?

@jackg
thank you for your feedback regarding ease us. will give it a try if recuva fails.

Does it give you the number of .dat files it detects while running in recuva? I think it should be a .dat file (though what do the archive files have an extension of)?

[ratiobitcoin]

one more question:
I've given it a first try using recuva. recuva has recovered a lot of files, some of them are archives with only numbers as names, some are different types of document formats.

1) will the wallet.dat be a .dat file, so i can easily detect it, or could it be a archive file or something like that?
2) what is the fastest way to detect the .dat file from the recovered files without checking every file by hand?

@jackg
thank you for your feedback regarding ease us. will give it a try if recuva fails.

Does it give you the number of .dat files it detects while running in recuva? I think it should be a .dat file (though what do the archive files have an extension of)?

archives are ending on .zip, they are of all sizes (4 kb to 1.9 GB).

check hasn't run through all the way so i do not know the number of .dat files, but i've seen two so far.

[jackg]

one more question:
I've given it a first try using recuva. recuva has recovered a lot of files, some of them are archives with only numbers as names, some are different types of document formats.

1) will the wallet.dat be a .dat file, so i can easily detect it, or could it be a archive file or something like that?
2) what is the fastest way to detect the .dat file from the recovered files without checking every file by hand?

@jackg
thank you for your feedback regarding ease us. will give it a try if recuva fails.

Does it give you the number of .dat files it detects while running in recuva? I think it should be a .dat file (though what do the archive files have an extension of)?

archives are ending on .zip, they are of all sizes (4 kb to 1.9 GB).

check hasn't run through all the way so i do not know the number of .dat files, but i've seen two so far.

Do you recognise these zip files if not they might just be an alternative format of your recovered information.

Did you password protect your wallet? If you did, it might be a bit more difficult to recover if and when you find the right file.

There are generally a number of .dat files made by an OS and other programs so there's that to contend with here also...

[ratiobitcoin]

sadly i do not recognise the zip files. i was just wondering if i have to extract all of them or if i might be able to ignore them as there are many of them.

haven't found the wallet.dat yet, will continue.

as far as i can remember, the wallet wasn't password protected. it was one of the first 2011 bitcoin Qt versions.

[jackg]

sadly i do not recognise the zip files. i was just wondering if i have to extract all of them or if i might be able to ignore them as there are many of them.

haven't found the wallet.dat yet, will continue.

as far as i can remember, the wallet wasn't password protected. it was one of the first 2011 bitcoin Qt versions.

I hope you're not looking for the name "wallet.dat" as that name has gone. It's stored separately to the actual file data. Only way for you to get the data is to try them all in core or trying to open them in a text editor to determine their authenticity as a potential core wallet.

[Chachacoin17]

one more question:
I've given it a first try using recuva. recuva has recovered a lot of files, some of them are archives with only numbers as names, some are different types of document formats.

1) will the wallet.dat be a .dat file, so i can easily detect it, or could it be a archive file or something like that?
2) what is the fastest way to detect the .dat file from the recovered files without checking every file by hand?

@jackg
thank you for your feedback regarding ease us. will give it a try if recuva fails.

Does it give you the number of .dat files it detects while running in recuva? I think it should be a .dat file (though what do the archive files have an extension of)?

archives are ending on .zip, they are of all sizes (4 kb to 1.9 GB).

check hasn't run through all the way so i do not know the number of .dat files, but i've seen two so far.

Do you recognise these zip files if not they might just be an alternative format of your recovered information.

Did you password protect your wallet? If you did, it might be a bit more difficult to recover if and when you find the right file.

There are generally a number of .dat files made by an OS and other programs so there's that to contend with here also...

We might need cracking softwares for that encrypted file so far, and for that password protection it really needs to be remebered so the recovery will be much faster. One the best solutions to have was through torrent applications, and I can guaranteed those legit ones to have rather than freewares. You can find more recovery tools with licensed imbeeded on it, and those cam really solve problems in an optimum ways.

[jackg]

We might need cracking softwares for that encrypted file so far ~snip~

The wallet isn't encrypted:

the wallet wasn't password protected. 

I don't think encryption came in until late 2011/early 2012 from what I've read.

[bob123]

Before messing around with recovery software you should make sure to have at least one or two additional images of your drive.

The process would be the following:

• Install your preferred linux on a bootable medium
• Make X images of your old drive using DD or any copy tool and a software writeblocker
• Keep the original drive and don't touch it
• Use any recovery software on one of the images you have
• Preferably use a fresh image for each software you try

This way you won't be able to mess something up which might lead to a corruption of your data.
And if nothing else works, you will still have the possibility of asking a professional data recovery service with your original drive.

[ratiobitcoin]

sadly i do not recognise the zip files. i was just wondering if i have to extract all of them or if i might be able to ignore them as there are many of them.

haven't found the wallet.dat yet, will continue.

as far as i can remember, the wallet wasn't password protected. it was one of the first 2011 bitcoin Qt versions.

I hope you're not looking for the name "wallet.dat" as that name has gone. It's stored separately to the actual file data. Only way for you to get the data is to try them all in core or trying to open them in a text editor to determine their authenticity as a potential core wallet.

well, i was looking for a file named wallet.dat. haven't found one yet.

so you say, the file name could be different and i should try to open every .dat file in bitcoin core wallet?

thanks for helping out!

@bob123
Thats a good point, thank you! what program does "DD" stand for?

[bob123]

Thats a good point, thank you! what program does "DD" stand for?

Dd is a comand line tool to read/write to files. It is used for proper (but slow) cloning of hard drives (copying drive sector-by-sector, bit-by-bit to make an exact duplicate).
But you can use any tool you'd like. Clonezilla is an often recommended imaging/cloning tool which brings a lot of cloning techniques with it (e.g. dd). 

[ratiobitcoin]

Thats a good point, thank you! what program does "DD" stand for?

Dd is a comand line tool to read/write to files. It is used for proper (but slow) cloning of hard drives (copying drive sector-by-sector, bit-by-bit to make an exact duplicate).
But you can use any tool you'd like. Clonezilla is an often recommended imaging/cloning tool which brings a lot of cloning techniques with it (e.g. dd). 

thank you i will give it a try.