Missing bitcoin transactions in Bitcoin-QT

[ThorsHammer]

So I think I may royally screwed up and need some help to possibly fix this...Recently I downloaded B-QT to my E: drive as it is the bigger of my two hard drives (my C: is a 60 GB SSD which I use pretty much just to boot Windows from). However, every single time I would start the wallet, it would download and store the blockchain to my C: which does not have the required space to download it. Every single time the blockchain would try to download, it would fill up my C: and never finish. I decided that I would start moving the files from my AppData folder on my C: to my E:. Essentially I thought I could download the blockchain piece by piece and then move it over every single time my C: would fill up. Unfortunately this is where my problem comes in...the address that I was using to receive bitcoins was changed repeatedly each time I moved the folder from AppData to my Bitcoin folder on my E:. Since the wallet never finished downloading, those bitcoins I fear I sent are gone since the address currently is wrong on Bitcoin-QT. Is there any way to retrieve those bitcoins or are they gone forever? I really have no idea where to begin so any help would be greatly appreciated, assuming it can be fixed...

[1715127445]

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[1715127445]

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[1715127445]

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[1715127445]

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[DannyHamilton]

If you didn't create a backup of your wallet before you started this process, then yes you have lost those coins forever.

The file that maintains your addresses (and your private keys that give you access to the coins at those addresses) is wallet.dat.  If you moved wallet.dat to your E: drive and started up Bitcoin-Qt in such a way that it was looking in your C: drive where it no longer existed, then Bitcoin-Qt will create a brand new completely different wallet.dat.  At that point you have 2 wallet.dat files.  One on your E: drive with access to all your coins, and another on your C: drive without any access to your coins.

If you then move the new wallet.dat from the C: drive to the same directory where the old wallet.dat is sitting on your E: drive without renaming it, then you overwrite the contents of the original wallet.dat with the contents of the new wallet.dat.  At that point, if you don't have some sort of backup of that original wallet.dat you have pretty done the equivalent of tossing your money into a fire.  Access to it is destroyed and lost forever.

On the other hand, if you have created some sort of backup of the contents of your wallet.dat at some point in time before you started this process, then that old backup might still contain access to your bitcoins if you restore it.

[deepceleron]

I have a 60GB SSD with Windows, Bitcoin, lots of programs, and 10GB free. You have something else hogging space on your C: drive, like windows system recovery (10%), hibernate file (size of your RAM), page file, recycle bin, service pack backup, etc. Clean up your toys.

If in the future you wish to specify that Bitcoin store its data in a different location, you can use the option:
C:\Program Files\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt -datadir=E:\bitdata

Put that into a text file and rename it to "startbitcoin.cmd" and then you can run it. You will need to manage your wallet.dat file before you do this, such as copying your existing wallet.dat into E:\bitdata before running Bitcoin, otherwise Bitcoin will create another empty wallet.dat there.