computer crashed and HDD is dead??

[malikzfs]

My computer crashed and HDD is dead. The only thing I got is the PASSPHRASE with several words. Does it help to restore my wallet?

[ranochigo]

What wallet are you using? If you're using Bitcoin Core, you will need the wallet.dat to recover your wallet. Unless you've extracted your HD seed before, you will need wallet.dat.

If you've used a wallet like Electrum, the seed that was given to you will be enough to recover. I would advise you to get someone to recover your files on your HDD if you haven't tried.

[jackg]

What wallet are you using? If you're using Bitcoin Core, you will need the wallet.dat to recover your wallet. Unless you've extracted your HD seed before, you will need wallet.dat.

If you've used a wallet like Electrum, the seed that was given to you will be enough to recover. I would advise you to get someone to recover your files on your HDD if you haven't tried.

No. Electrum also requires the entire data file as do most desktop/computer wallets.

My computer crashed and HDD is dead. The only thing I got is the PASSPHRASE with several words. Does it help to restore my wallet?

You'll get nowhere without your original files, if it's profitible to do so then you'll have to send your hard drive to a data rcovery company for them to try to fix it. (You could try it yourself but you may end up losing more data that way from the drive).

[HCP]

No. Electrum also requires the entire data file as do most desktop/computer wallets.

That is just plain wrong. The entire point of HD wallets like Electrum is that the entire thing can be restored using only the 12 word seed. So, if OP's "PASSPHRASE" is 12 words... and he was using Electrum a simple wallet restore is possible.

It all depends what wallet was being used tho.

[jackg]

No. Electrum also requires the entire data file as do most desktop/computer wallets.

That is just plain wrong. The entire point of HD wallets like Electrum is that the entire thing can be restored using only the 12 word seed. So, if OP's "PASSPHRASE" is 12 words... and he was using Electrum a simple wallet restore is possible.

It all depends what wallet was being used tho.

Electrum isn't a hardware wallet? If I damage my hard drive and lose the backup of my electrum wallet, then I can no access the information from it. As Electrum has no central servers to store the data on it.

Are you thinking of the hardware parts of electrum? If so, then you can definitely restore from them by just plugging them into your computer and putting in the pass code. But the regular version of electrum does not have this.

It's just an executable written in python. https://electrum.org/#download

[cr1776]

No. Electrum also requires the entire data file as do most desktop/computer wallets.

That is just plain wrong. The entire point of HD wallets like Electrum is that the entire thing can be restored using only the 12 word seed. So, if OP's "PASSPHRASE" is 12 words... and he was using Electrum a simple wallet restore is possible.

It all depends what wallet was being used tho.

Electrum isn't a hardware wallet? If I damage my hard drive and lose the backup of my electrum wallet, then I can no access the information from it. As Electrum has no central servers to store the data on it.

Are you thinking of the hardware parts of electrum? If so, then you can definitely restore from them by just plugging them into your computer and putting in the pass code. But the regular version of electrum does not have this.

It's just an executable written in python. https://electrum.org/#download

HD wallets like electrum can be recovered from the seed words without anything on the computer. We don't know if he is using electrum though. From his comments, it sounds like it could be a HD wallet though.

[jackg]

No. Electrum also requires the entire data file as do most desktop/computer wallets.

That is just plain wrong. The entire point of HD wallets like Electrum is that the entire thing can be restored using only the 12 word seed. So, if OP's "PASSPHRASE" is 12 words... and he was using Electrum a simple wallet restore is possible.

It all depends what wallet was being used tho.

Electrum isn't a hardware wallet? If I damage my hard drive and lose the backup of my electrum wallet, then I can no access the information from it. As Electrum has no central servers to store the data on it.

Are you thinking of the hardware parts of electrum? If so, then you can definitely restore from them by just plugging them into your computer and putting in the pass code. But the regular version of electrum does not have this.

It's just an executable written in python. https://electrum.org/#download

HD wallets like electrum can be recovered from the seed words without anything on the computer. We don't know if he is using electrum though. From his comments, it sounds like it could be a HD wallet though.

Have I compiled my electrum wallet wrong then? If I try to recover it from anything by my recovery drive then it always creates a fresh wallet (although whether that's a security thing or not i'm not sure).

Anyway, sorry for accidently hijacking this thread in my previous and this response. The phassphrase that he references, is required for bitcoin-qt but I'm not sure that encrypts it as that is written in plain text as far as I know so if it is for core then it will only be useful if the rest of the file is there.

[cr1776]

No. Electrum also requires the entire data file as do most desktop/computer wallets.

That is just plain wrong. The entire point of HD wallets like Electrum is that the entire thing can be restored using only the 12 word seed. So, if OP's "PASSPHRASE" is 12 words... and he was using Electrum a simple wallet restore is possible.

It all depends what wallet was being used tho.

Electrum isn't a hardware wallet? If I damage my hard drive and lose the backup of my electrum wallet, then I can no access the information from it. As Electrum has no central servers to store the data on it.

Are you thinking of the hardware parts of electrum? If so, then you can definitely restore from them by just plugging them into your computer and putting in the pass code. But the regular version of electrum does not have this.

It's just an executable written in python. https://electrum.org/#download

HD wallets like electrum can be recovered from the seed words without anything on the computer. We don't know if he is using electrum though. From his comments, it sounds like it could be a HD wallet though.

Have I compiled my electrum wallet wrong then? If I try to recover it from anything by my recovery drive then it always creates a fresh wallet (although whether that's a security thing or not i'm not sure).

Anyway, sorry for accidently hijacking this thread in my previous and this response. The phassphrase that he references, is required for bitcoin-qt but I'm not sure that encrypts it as that is written in plain text as far as I know so if it is for core then it will only be useful if the rest of the file is there.

Electrum(1) and Bitcoin Core(2) wallets created in version 0.13.0 or later are HD wallets.

Electrum will give a seed phrase or seed words like "constant forest adore false green weave stop guy fur freeze giggle clock" which will allow one to recreate the wallet on a new machine or anywhere else.  You could put Electrum on a new computer, enter those words, and everything should return to normal.

Bitcoin Core wallets created prior to 0.13.0 will not be HD wallets unless transferred to a new HD wallet, but once you have a master HD wallet in Bitcoin  Core, backing it up once should be sufficient to restore the entire wallet.

Whether the "passphrase of several words" is one like the one above or the password that locks the wallet.dat (or other wallet file) is the open question.  Once malikzfs gives more information about what wallet he was using etc it will help to be able to give better advice.

See:

(1) http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/faq.html
(2) see e.g https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/08/23/release-0.13.0/

[HCP]

Electrum isn't a hardware wallet? If I damage my hard drive and lose the backup of my electrum wallet, then I can no access the information from it. As Electrum has no central servers to store the data on it.

Are you thinking of the hardware parts of electrum? If so, then you can definitely restore from them by just plugging them into your computer and putting in the pass code. But the regular version of electrum does not have this.

It's just an executable written in python. https://electrum.org/#download

Have I compiled my electrum wallet wrong then? If I try to recover it from anything by my recovery drive then it always creates a fresh wallet (although whether that's a security thing or not i'm not sure).

HD doesn't stand for hardware... it stands for "Heirachical Deterministic": https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deterministic_wallet#Type_2_hierarchical_deterministic_wallet

Basically, you have a seed which acts as a starting point and ALL your wallet addresses are generated from this starting point in a known, repeatable way... so should your computer be completely destroyed, you simply load up Electrum on a new PC, "restore" -> "I have a seed" -> put in your seed words and the wallet will recreate exactly the same addresses and thus rebuild your wallet from the data already in the blockchain

[Thekool1s]

Is the hdd drive mechanically dead? Or do you hear voices from it? If you hear some noice or vibration from it. Chances are you can recover your wallet.dat file. There are many softwares out there which will help you recover files. Good luck OP

[honestis.network]

Electrum isn't a hardware wallet? If I damage my hard drive and lose the backup of my electrum wallet, then I can no access the information from it. As Electrum has no central servers to store the data on it.

Are you thinking of the hardware parts of electrum? If so, then you can definitely restore from them by just plugging them into your computer and putting in the pass code. But the regular version of electrum does not have this.

It's just an executable written in python. https://electrum.org/#download

Have I compiled my electrum wallet wrong then? If I try to recover it from anything by my recovery drive then it always creates a fresh wallet (although whether that's a security thing or not i'm not sure).

HD doesn't stand for hardware... it stands for "Heirachical Deterministic": https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deterministic_wallet#Type_2_hierarchical_deterministic_wallet

Basically, you have a seed which acts as a starting point and ALL your wallet addresses are generated from this starting point in a known, repeatable way... so should your computer be completely destroyed, you simply load up Electrum on a new PC, "restore" -> "I have a seed" -> put in your seed words and the wallet will recreate exactly the same addresses and thus rebuild your wallet from the data already in the blockchain

So did you try all those ?? and what is the result. hierarchical Deterministic

There are some script looking for partial keys or dat files on damaged HardDrives.