~

[allinvain]

ribuck,

yes, that was a portentous post! Well, i ain't through with btc yet, but yes allinvain, as you may see from the blockchains, the sum was non-negligeable.

Sorry about that. I did not look at the blockchain. I want to but it seems the site is down.

[germanMNY]

Use the local network to dump the system-memory!

http://www.theknotter.net/system-memory-dumps-on-linux/

Our first idea could be to just direct the dump to a file using the shell but that would have the undesired effect of filling up the kernel’s internal caches, thus wiping the data we are interesting in. So if we can’t put the dump into the hard drive why don’t we store it somewhere else on our local network? A very simple way to achieve this is to listen for a connection from a different host and then run our script piping the output to netcat.

[dayfall]

Ouch!  It looks like you lost it all.

[TheGer]

Lesson learned.

Personally I save ALLLLLLLL  Wallet files on a flash drive just in case.  It costs me nothing in effort, and in the case we have here, nothing in Bitcoins.

[Capitan]

Are you sure you deleted it permanently? I don't know about this in too much detail, but sometimes when you delete a file the computer doesn't actually overwrite the bits on the hard drive. It just erases the pointer in the file system that says "wallet.dat starts at this hard drive sector, and is X sectors long" (over simplified, but enough for the purposes of this discussion).

Try to avoid doing anything that will write new data to your hard drive, so if possible avoid using the computer at all for now, and use a laptop for the following: Do a Google search for "how to recover deleted files" and/or "undelete files in Windows" (or whatever your OS is).

I think you will be able to find programs that will read your hard drive and allow you to recover "deleted" files. Second, if your wallet.dat was in a Dropbox folder, you can just get a backup of it from the DropBox web UI. One thing I do is create a small TrueCrypt volume and move my wallet.dat to that volume. Then I create a symbolic link (windows 7) from Users/Capitan/AppData/Roaming/Bitcoin/wallet.dat -> TrueCryptVolume:\wallet.dat. Then I unmount the TrueCrypt volume. The encrypted volume is stored in my DropBox, so even if someone hacks my DropBox account they would still just get an encrypted copy of my wallet. This also has the benefit of creating automatic version history of my encrypted wallet in case it ever gets deleted.

The only downside is that I have to mount the volume whenever I open the client, but I pretty much never have to do that unless I want to send bitcoins somewhere else. Theoretically I could keep the volume encrypted and unmounted for 20 years and log in 20 years from now, and the Bitcoin client will read the block chain to push all the Bitcoins I received during those 20 years into my wallet. I don't think I'm ever going to mount that volume in my current PC again, because I'm paranoid about security after recent posts on this board. I will have to set up a new secure and clean one on Linux and mount from there the next time I need to open the wallet.

[myrkul]

Are you sure you deleted it permanently? I don't know about this in too much detail, but sometimes when you delete a file the computer doesn't actually overwrite the bits on the hard drive. It just erases the pointer in the file system that says "wallet.dat starts at this hard drive sector, and is X sectors long" (over simplified, but enough for the purposes of this discussion).

Try to avoid doing anything that will write new data to your hard drive, so if possible avoid using the computer at all for now, and use a laptop for the following: Do a Google search for "how to recover deleted files" and/or "undelete files in Windows" (or whatever your OS is).

Linux shred. He deleted it with extreme prejudice.

[Capitan]

Ah, I miss

Are you sure you deleted it permanently? I don't know about this in too much detail, but sometimes when you delete a file the computer doesn't actually overwrite the bits on the hard drive. It just erases the pointer in the file system that says "wallet.dat starts at this hard drive sector, and is X sectors long" (over simplified, but enough for the purposes of this discussion).

Try to avoid doing anything that will write new data to your hard drive, so if possible avoid using the computer at all for now, and use a laptop for the following: Do a Google search for "how to recover deleted files" and/or "undelete files in Windows" (or whatever your OS is).

Linux shred. He deleted it with extreme prejudice.

Ah, I must have skipped the part where he said that. Sucks to be him then.

[LeFBI]

Address 13fEJojp1mkDRpCQ4t2eTXKiRHvMz6hYjQ
Short link: http://blockexplorer.com/a/277RyrvAc7

    First seen?: Block 131302 (2011-06-16 20:37:02)
    Received transactions: 6
    Received BTC: 371.13000001
    Sent transactions: 5
    Sent BTC: 5.95000001

365.18 btc .....dude.......ouch! ........WHY??....why did you do that?
you could have tested sending these btc to my address....but noooo.....doh
next time, please use 1HfX1okdauFE5GxxtPa3ZMHmzZYNCt6j19 to waste some btc please :-/

365.18 btc ~ 5660.29USD (1btc = 15.5USD at mtgox)

i can feel your pain op

[kwukduck]

I never delete any wallet, not even empty/test wallets.

[tymothy]

Having read about multiple early adopters losing large amount of Bitcoins (messing up backups, malware, etc.), I wonder if humans in general can actually deal with this.

Is 100% vigilance possible at all times?

Having read about multiple early adopters losing large amount of paper currency (fires, bandits, etc.), I wonder if humans in general can actually deal with this.

Is 100% vigilance possible at all times?

[N12]

Having read about multiple early adopters losing large amount of paper currency (fires, bandits, etc.), I wonder if humans in general can actually deal with this.

Is 100% vigilance possible at all times?

In my opinion the chance of human error wiping out your entire wealth is much greater with Bitcoin. But of course you could mitigate that risk by storing it with trusted third parties.

[myrkul]

Having read about multiple early adopters losing large amount of paper currency (fires, bandits, etc.), I wonder if humans in general can actually deal with this.

Is 100% vigilance possible at all times?

In my opinion the chance of human error wiping out your entire wealth is much greater with Bitcoin. But of course you could mitigate that risk by storing it with trusted third parties.

A single wallet.dat is the point of failure. You're much more likely to, through human error lose all your wealth if you bury it in a chest in the back yard and then forget when you move.

[Chick]

I'm laughing at the pure stupidity of the OP right now.

WHY? WHY WOULD YOU USE SHRED?

[SgtSpike]

Address 13fEJojp1mkDRpCQ4t2eTXKiRHvMz6hYjQ
Short link: http://blockexplorer.com/a/277RyrvAc7

    First seen?: Block 131302 (2011-06-16 20:37:02)
    Received transactions: 6
    Received BTC: 371.13000001
    Sent transactions: 5
    Sent BTC: 5.95000001

365.18 btc .....dude.......ouch! ........WHY??....why did you do that?
you could have tested sending these btc to my address....but noooo.....doh
next time, please use 1HfX1okdauFE5GxxtPa3ZMHmzZYNCt6j19 to waste some btc please :-/

365.18 btc ~ 5660.29USD (1btc = 15.5USD at mtgox)

i can feel your pain op

Time to add it to the known lost bitcoins thread...

[germanMNY]

yeah, shred: really! :-O

And? Have you dumped your system ram ?

[niemivh]

Can't believe the recklessness of people and their wallet.dat files.  It blows me away.  I have less than he lost and I've got it double backed up and offline (not on any computer) unless I'm using it then promptly delete it after double backing it up again.

Remember this is like cash.

[SgtSpike]

I've got an encrypted backup on a thumbdrive, just in case... probably not going to bother with more than that unless I get a lot more BTC than I have now.

[Serge]

we desperately need wallet management in bitcoin client.

[ribuck]

we desperately need wallet management in bitcoin client.

Go for it! Patches are welcomed.

If you're not a coder, you could offer a bounty instead.

[bcearl]

Linux shred does not work on file level. That's a prehistoric tool. Stop using the filesystem with the wallets on it immediately. Scan the whole partition for wallet-like patterns after that.