Bitcoins lost - old backup

[tofu]

Hello

  I've lost around 75 btc. I don't know how.
  Maibe it's related to a client update.
  I have an old backup of wallet.dat. I've removed all .bitcoin/ and restored walled.dat and waited to block chain download (with the new client version) but it doesn't work. Any ideas?

[CIYAM]

What errors (if any) are you seeing (and was your wallet encrypted)?

[nelisky]

Hey,

When you say it doesn't work, what do you mean exactly? The new client doesn't work? It works but doesn't show your balance?

If you removed everything from .bitcoin/, placed the backup wallet.dat in it and started from that, it should show all addresses and history from the backup wallet, does it show any transactions? Did all the blocks download?

Did you backup the wallet.dat that was in .bitcoin/ *before* removing everything in it?

Good luck !

[tofu]

Sorry for the lack of information.
The client starts ok but balance it's near to 0 and it should be around 75.

The first error was a database error, then i searched information and found a solution. I removed all files in .bitcoin/ and restore wallet.dat and all was ok but i shoud have more transactions and balance. Could it be lost?

[tofu]

Yes, the wallet is encrypted.

I have two backups one encrypted (after encryption) and one without encryption (after creation)

[tofu]

the original wallet.dat says "wallet.dat corrupt, savage failed"

[nelisky]

So you are using the same wallet.dat file from .bitcoin/ before delete, or are you using an old backup of your wallet.dat?

If the latter, and depending on how often you make payments, you might have a too old wallet that doesn't have the addresses where you have most of your btc. By default the bitcoin client keeps 100 addresses in a pool and uses these as needed, so if you made a backup, made more than 100 payments and then recovered that wallet you might be out of luck.

Rule of thumb: don't delete ANYTHING until you are sure there's nothing more to do. If you need to clean up .bitcoin/, just move it somewhere else and create a new directory.

[CIYAM]

I have two backups one encrypted (after encryption) and one without encryption (after creation)

Okay - if you had issued tx's *after* you encrypted the wallet then the chances are very slim that the backup of the unencrypted wallet will be of any use (this has happened to others).

So assuming that you using the backup of the encrypted wallet and that no errors are occurring you might need to run bitcoin with the -rescan option.

[Stephen Gornick]

if you had issued tx's *after* you encrypted the wallet then the chances are very slim that the backup of the unencrypted wallet will be of any use

Just to clarify, what that is referring to is after encryption, none of the addresses used for change will have existed in the backup that was made prior to encryption.

But that doesn't mean the old backup has no value after encryption.   Encryption only flushes the key pool, it doesn't touch any bitcoins that were in the old wallet.  Only spending those coins after encryption would cause the change to go to new addresses that didn't previously exist.  So the old backup could still have some or all of the coins yet.

Of course, the encrypted wallet should not be missing anything, so like CIYAM suggested,  -rescan

Then if things still don't add up, look at the transactions to see if there are any that shouldn't be there.

[tofu]

I think I'm out of luck.

I encrypted the wallet and I started to bet satoshi dice. All payments are done to the encrypted wallet but I have 4000 movements and the wallet.dat backup it's from movement 0. So I think I definitelly lost the btc. Well, Now I know a bit more of bitcoin system
Fortunatelly I keep 50% of my winnings before start this new wallet.

by the way, I don't delete .bitcoin/ directory, I just move to .bitcoin_old1 .bitcoin_old2 ... to keep it just in case.

The problem here is the backup it's too old and it doesn't has the addresses with the incomings good to know for the next time.

Thank you to all for your help!

[Raoul Duke]

have you tried to use -salvagewallet ?

You can also try to use pywallet and see if it dumps something.

Code:

./pywallet --dumpwallet --password="Whatever your passphrase is"

It will probably not work because of the wallet corruption, but you should at least try.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I think I'm out of luck.

All payments are done to the encrypted wallet but I have 4000 movements and the wallet.dat backup it's from movement 0.

The problem here is the backup it's too old and it doesn't has the addresses with the incomings good to know for the next time.

Mystery solved.   Remember the default keypool is 100 tx.  So you need to make backups at least once every 100 txs (I would say once ever 50 to be safe).  You can however extend the keypool.  For example bitcoind -keypool=2000 would make the keypool 2000 and reduce the frequency of backups (at the expense of a larger wallet).

In time hopefully the reference wallet will go to a deterministic model.  Unique random private keys are simply to "fragile".  It is to easy to lose coins.  A deterministic wallet would always be safe if the seed is saved or backed up.

[bitcoinvideos]

I know this is a little late but I wanted to piggy back off this and ask what might be a dumb question...what happens if I have an old backup which is encrypted on a USB drive stored away and I restore this?  Does it simply sync back the new transactions to the addresses? Assuming I have not used 100 addresses or is it 100 transactions?

[DeathAndTaxes]

I know this is a little late but I wanted to piggy back off this and ask what might be a dumb question...what happens if I have an old backup which is encrypted on a USB drive stored away and I restore this?  Does it simply sync back the new transactions to the addresses? Assuming I have not used 100 addresses or is it 100 transactions?

Yes.  It really isn't syncing though.  When the client loads the wallet.dat it uses the blockchain to find any unspent outptuts sent to any address in the wallet.  It them sums up the value of all the unspent outputs and displays that as the "available balance".   The client doesn't know the wallet.dat is an "old backup".  Any wallet, any time it compares the addresses in the wallet to the blockchain, locates all the unpsent outputs, and totals their value.

The issue with "old" backups is that you may have received coins at an address (and thus private key) which is NOT in the backup.  If the address & private key are not in the backup well there is no way to recover those funds.  The limit is technically 100 NEW addresses however everytime you SENT (not receive) coins you use a new address as change so you can think of it as 100 transactions.

[DannyHamilton]

I know this is a little late but I wanted to piggy back off this and ask what might be a dumb question...what happens if I have an old backup which is encrypted on a USB drive stored away and I restore this?  Does it simply sync back the new transactions to the addresses? Assuming I have not used 100 addresses or is it 100 transactions?

Yes.  The transactions are stored in the blockchain.  The wallet.dat has the private keys associated with your addresses allowing you to create transactions.  The standard default configuration of the program pre-generates 100 addresses and stores them in the wallet.  Each time you use an address/private key, it is taken from this pre-generated pool, so if you receive/send any bitcoin after the backup those transactions will generally be found when you restore the wallet.

A couple of notes on this process:

• When you encrypt your wallet, it throws away all the unused pre-generated addresses and regenerates 100 addresses with encrypted private keys. This means that If you perform some transactions that use the pre-generated addresses after encryption, but restore the wallet from before encryption, then it won't find those transactions that used addresses from the encrypted pool of addresses.
• It is 100 addresses that you are concerned with, however most transactions to send coins program secretly use addresses without telling you.  If you want to send 2 BTC to Sally, your client program will likely send more than 2 BTC and spllit the recipients with 2 BTC going to Sally's address and the remaining "change" being sent back to one of the pre-generated addresses.  You won't see this address listed in the user interface of the program, but it still uses up one of the 100 addresses.

[bitcoinvideos]

So then if I used some sort of monthly recurring schedule that I stuck to I would be relatively safe  is what I am gathering.  I encrypted the wallet right away before doing anything so that part is good.  Last night I closed out bitcoin, copied the wallet.dat to a USB drive which is a Truecrypt volume then put it in my fire proof safe.  Each month, around the 15th or so, I plan on updating that file with the most recent copy.  I also thought about creating a 2-5mb truecrypt volume and dropboxing that file more frequently...

[Stephen Gornick]

copied the wallet.dat to a USB drive which is a Truecrypt volume then put it in my fire proof safe.

If the wallet.dat is using passphrase encryption the keys are safe even without also encrypting using TrueCrypt -- though that isn't going to hurt anything if you are comfortable with TrueCrypt and will remember that passphrase as well.

There are transaction details stored in the wallet.dat so some people encyrpt their wallet.dat backups to protect privacy with that as well.

But yes -- as long as your backup cycle occurs more frequently than every 100 transactions your backup strategy is sufficient.   You can also increase the keypool size to a larger (or smaller) amount of keys if there is a chance you might make 100 transactions during the month.

[jl2012]

Frankly speaking, people should not use the reference client (i.e. the "official" client) unless they fully understand what it is doing. All these kinds of bitcoin loss is fully avoidable with determilistic wallet (e.g. Armory, Electrum) with proper paper backup. I never trust an electronic backup because it may corrupt for many reasons.

[bitcoinvideos]

Frankly speaking, people should not use the reference client (i.e. the "official" client) unless they fully understand what it is doing. All these kinds of bitcoin loss is fully avoidable with determilistic wallet (e.g. Armory, Electrum) with proper paper backup. I never trust an electronic backup because it may corrupt for many reasons.

This is very good to know but for people who are new into the world of BTC (me) and something I think I want to keep learning about.  Armory, according to the Wiki, is in alpha but their site seems to show it as readily available and usable.  Are you using it right now?

[prezbo]

Frankly speaking, people should not use the reference client (i.e. the "official" client) unless they fully understand what it is doing. All these kinds of bitcoin loss is fully avoidable with determilistic wallet (e.g. Armory, Electrum) with proper paper backup. I never trust an electronic backup because it may corrupt for many reasons.

this x 1000. I think newbies should start with electrum and go up from there if they need to.

This is very good to know but for people who are new into the world of BTC (me) and something I think I want to keep learning about.  Armory, according to the Wiki, is in alpha but their site seems to show it as readily available and usable.  Are you using it right now?

I started using armory recently. It has some cosmetic bugs, but other than that and being relatively resource intensive it works great. Especially the ability to create transactions and sign them offline is awesome. I can't wait for the new two-factor wallets.