Help! Lost Bitcoin Wallet!

[felixgun]

A friend of mine lost his bitcouns.  In 2010 he bought 1000 BTC and forgot about them.  He has since reformatted his computer, and has changed email accounts.  He doesn't even remember which service he used to acquire them.  Any way to locate them or are they lost forever?  Thanks in advance.

[Bobbydiggital]

1000 BTC are you serious? thats about  1 Million $  ouch thats a tough hit.
I think they are gone forever..

[BitThink]

A friend of mine ost his bitcouns.  In 2010 he bought 1000 BTC and forgot about them.  He has since reformatted his computer, and has changed email accounts.  He doesn't even remember which service he used to acquire them.  Any way to locate them or are they lost forever?  Thanks in advance.

The only possibility for him to recover the coins is to bring the hard disk to some experts and to see whether the wallet.dat file can be recovered. How large the chance is depends on how much space is unused after the reformatting.

Before doing anything, make several copies (bit by bit) of the original hard disk first.

[stompix]

If the coins were in his wallet , and he didn't had a brain wallet so he could remember his password , the only way to get them would be to recover the wallet.dat for the hdd , and hope it isn't corrupted.

[empoweoqwj]

If the coins were in his wallet , and he didn't had a brain wallet so he could remember his password , the only way to get them would be to recover the wallet.dat for the hdd , and hope it isn't corrupted.

Like a guy from 2010 that bought 1000 BTC had a "brain wallet". What are the odds?

[Abdussamad]

A friend of mine ost his bitcouns.  In 2010 he bought 1000 BTC and forgot about them.  He has since reformatted his computer, and has changed email accounts.  He doesn't even remember which service he used to acquire them.  Any way to locate them or are they lost forever?  Thanks in advance.

The only possibility for him to recover the coins is to bring the hard disk to some experts and to see whether the wallet.dat file can be recovered. How large the chance is depends on how much space is unused after the reformatting.

Before doing anything, make several copies (bit by bit) of the original hard disk first.

Too late. I am sure he's written over the data many times in the 3 years since '10.

[stompix]

If the coins were in his wallet , and he didn't had a brain wallet so he could remember his password , the only way to get them would be to recover the wallet.dat for the hdd , and hope it isn't corrupted.

Like a guy from 2010 that bought 1000 BTC had a "brain wallet". What are the odds?

I would consider them better than having that wallet.dat recovered.
Also I said If , give the man a piece of hope at least.

[empoweoqwj]

If the coins were in his wallet , and he didn't had a brain wallet so he could remember his password , the only way to get them would be to recover the wallet.dat for the hdd , and hope it isn't corrupted.

Like a guy from 2010 that bought 1000 BTC had a "brain wallet". What are the odds?

I would consider them better than having that wallet.dat recovered.
Also I said If , give the man a piece of hope at least.

Hope sure. Recover the HD. Brain wallet? That's delusional, not even false hope 

[TiagoTiago]

If it was stored on his HDD (intead of on some online service), then there is hope, even if small. First thing is pull the plug ASAP; even just booting up from the disk already comes with the risk of overwriting any data that might have survived all these years.

If it was an online service; perhaps he still got the email confirmation for the account creation somewhere?

[nate008]

Formatted HDD? And maybe not once but a few times?
The chances are so slim you're better of guessing the password.

The company where I worked a few years ago tried to recover some deleted pdf files from a computer after 1 month of use and they couldn't get back more than 50%.

[felixgun]

Thanks for the replies.  I will forward that information over.  If anyone else has any ideas let me know! Thanks in advance.

[empoweoqwj]

Formatted HDD? And maybe not once but a few times?
The chances are so slim you're better of guessing the password.

The company where I worked a few years ago tried to recover some deleted pdf files from a computer after 1 month of use and they couldn't get back more than 50%.

It all depends on the drive and what operations its done in the meantime. Every drive is different. There is some chance.

[zhinkk]

Damn, if he's telling the truth, that sucks. You can try a recovery program to recover the wallet file but I doubt it will work. Doesn't hurt to try, though.