electrum.dat as a binary file...looks very awkward

[zaptakes]

Hi all,

As a lot of newbs out there, back in 2013, i made the big mistake is the good od' days to didn't give a shit about the seed. It was on the version 1.9 of the electrum client, on windows.
One week ago, i was able to synchronize my wallet with the last client i dl , on linux mint. But i was foolish enough to don't try to spend the last btc i had on an other wallet. I have since sync' other wallets and it worked fine for them.


But my electrum.dat of 2013 now looks like a binary file ( it is corrupted i presume ? ) i don't know who this shit happened. I tried to read it with emacs but of course those are only unreadable caracters, and  the client don't recognize the file.


Is there a way to recover my wallet ? I mean, maybe with "recovery tools " , and other sophisticated process? At this point , if it's possible, i presume i need strong help 

Thanks

[1714854673]

1714854673

[pooya87]

there is no file called "electrum.dat" unless you renamed it or used a modified code. as far as i can remember even in older versions wallet file has been saved as a file called "default_wallet" and additional wallet files are "wallet_1" ,... unless you rename them.

and if the wallet file is not encrypted you can easily open it with a text editor and see it as JSON object
{
    "accounts": {
        "0": {
            "change": [
                "[...]
            ],
            "receiving": [...]

and if encrypted the wallet file with a password [not sure about newer versions but] you can still see it the same way but the "master_private_keys" and "seed" fields are now encrypted.

p.s. checked these on windows. but it should be the same on other OS.

[zaptakes]

Thanks for your answer,
It says me on linux that it s impossible to open the file with a text editor.
What do you mean by a " modified code " ?

[pooya87]

are you sure the old wallet was a version 1.9? because i started using Electrum with version 1.9 and it didn't have any file called electrum.dat however i did a little search and apparently it is a version 1.8 and lower look here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=325364.0
i hope that topic is helpful for you. but remember to keep a backup from your files before doing anything.

[Abdussamad]

zaptakes two things occured to me now after reading pooya87s post. First I suggest trying to open your wallet with a 1.8 version of electrum. If you manage to open it then you should view the seed and write it down for later restoration in a newer version. Sending the bitcoins to another address you control will probably not work because there have been changes to the bitcoin network that the 1.8 version doesn't support.

The other thing that's interesting is that you forgot to mention in the OP that your wallet was on a USB stick? Is that correct? I know a lot of lay people just yank the USB stick out without first unmounting it in software. They don't do the whole safely remove USB stick thing that you are supposed to do. So maybe you did that and that is the cause of your file corruption. It would explain why you were initially able to open the wallet but can't do it anymore.

[zaptakes]

Thanks for your answers guys,
i have installed version 1.8 and fortunately enough  there is an electrum.dat by default. ( a readable one , but without a seed , or i can't see it)

And yes Abdussamad my old electrum.dat file is corrupted certainly due to bad unmounting

So because of my binary file/ corrupted on , is there something i can do next ?

[Abdussamad]

Thanks for your answers guys,
i have installed version 1.8 and fortunately enough  there is an electrum.dat by default. ( a readable one , but without a seed , or i can't see it)

And yes Abdussamad my old electrum.dat file is corrupted certainly due to bad unmounting

So because of my binary file/ corrupted on , is there something i can do next ?

i've told you above to open the wallet file using 1.8 and use one of the options in the menus to view the seed. is there an option like that in the menus? there is also a seed icon in the bottom part of the window that you can use. write down the seed and restore the wallet using the latest version of electrum.

[zaptakes]

Abdussamad,
there is an option to see the seed, but i can't see it since my electrum.dat wallet that contains my old btc is a corrupted file.I have tried to put a password but it didn't work also.
 do i need to find a way to read my old electrum.dat file with an other tool than emacs ?

[Abdussamad]

Abdussamad,
there is an option to see the seed, but i can't see it since my electrum.dat wallet that contains my old btc is a corrupted file.I have tried to put a password but it didn't work also.
 do i need to find a way to read my old electrum.dat file with an other tool than emacs ?

I honestly don't know what you can do with that corrupt file. Have you considered using a professional data recovery service? I don't know what else to suggest.