How to recover btc after windows reinstall

[morbius55]

Can anyone point me to a guide on using pywallet or a recovery program to attempt getting my btc back from a hard drive that has had windows reinstalled. The drive was removed from the laptop and was used for less than a week after the stupid event. I have bought a hard drive caddy but want to know if i should use a recovery program or can i just use pywallet?. If anyone could point me to a guide that is useable by a computer novice, ie a step by step spoon feed type guide, i would be very grateful. Cheers guys.

[1714010642]

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[1714010642]

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[Lauda]

You need a wallet file to use pywallet. It alone, without such a file, is useless. If the drive was overwritten then the chance of recovery is very slim.
For attempting to recover, try one of these:
EaseUs
Recuve

[morbius55]

You need a wallet file to use pywallet. It alone, without such a file, is useless. If the drive was overwritten then the chance of recovery is very slim.
For attempting to recover, try one of these:
EaseUs
Recuve

Thanks for your reply. So the first step would be to search for wallet.dat? using a recovery program, how could i distinguish between ltc, qrk and btc data?. I have to try whatever it takes as we are talking about maybe 32btc plus some ltc. cheers.

[Lauda]

Thanks for your reply. So the first step would be to search for wallet.dat? using a recovery program, how could i distinguish between ltc, qrk and btc data?.

They are all named 'wallet.dat', thus I don't believe that you could distinguish unless there is a leftover path. If you recover any wallet.dat file, back it up and throw it into a client(s) to test which it is.

I have to try whatever it takes as we are talking about maybe 32btc plus some ltc. cheers.

32 BTC and:
1) Using Windows.
2) Keeping all funds at one machine.
3) Having no other backups.
These are some of the worst security practices that I've seen. Good luck with the recovery.

[HCP]

pywallet also has a recovery mode for attempting to find deleted wallet files... whether or not it is able to find anything after the drive has been formatted and had the OS reinstalled is another story...

Read more here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38004.0

[felco]

Can anyone point me to a guide on using pywallet or a recovery program to attempt getting my btc back from a hard drive that has had windows reinstalled. The drive was removed from the laptop and was used for less than a week after the stupid event. I have bought a hard drive caddy but want to know if i should use a recovery program or can i just use pywallet?. If anyone could point me to a guide that is useable by a computer novice, ie a step by step spoon feed type guide, i would be very grateful. Cheers guys.

--

If you have the HDD, I would recommend one piece of software that I have used before(Though not recover DBase Files, that is the kind of file for wallet.dat), here the link: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

The software you want to use is PhotoRec. I would give it a shot. Just remember to save the recovered files in another drive, not the one you are scanning. Good Luck!

[morbius55]

Can anyone point me to a guide on using pywallet or a recovery program to attempt getting my btc back from a hard drive that has had windows reinstalled. The drive was removed from the laptop and was used for less than a week after the stupid event. I have bought a hard drive caddy but want to know if i should use a recovery program or can i just use pywallet?. If anyone could point me to a guide that is useable by a computer novice, ie a step by step spoon feed type guide, i would be very grateful. Cheers guys.

--

If you have the HDD, I would recommend one piece of software that I have used before(Though not recover DBase Files, that is the kind of file for wallet.dat), here the link: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

The software you want to use is PhotoRec. I would give it a shot. Just remember to save the recovered files in another drive, not the one you are scanning. Good Luck!

Thanks everyone, will keep trying with whatever info i can find or is suggested by anyone else. cheers.

[morbius55]

Just had a preliminary search of the drive using recuva but only let it run for 15 minutes before it was indicating that it had found 10's of thousands of files. Why so many? and what file path should i search rather than the whole hdd. Thanks.

[ranochigo]

Just had a preliminary search of the drive using recuva but only let it run for 15 minutes before it was indicating that it had found 10's of thousands of files. Why so many? and what file path should i search rather than the whole hdd. Thanks.

You should search the place where your data directory is stored at. By default, it is at %appdata%/Bitcoin.

If you changed the data directory, you have to specify it.

[SopaXT]

Which wallet were you using?
Nobody has asked this, so I think I should.

Was it Core? pywallet only works with Core wallets.
If not, there's still a chance, maybe you can contact a bitcoin recovery service.

[morbius55]

Just had a preliminary search of the drive using recuva but only let it run for 15 minutes before it was indicating that it had found 10's of thousands of files. Why so many? and what file path should i search rather than the whole hdd. Thanks.

You should search the place where your data directory is stored at. By default, it is at %appdata%/Bitcoin.

If you changed the data directory, you have to specify it.

So what would the exact file address be Users\Username\Apps\Roaming\Bitcoin\??, any help welcome. Also, what would a private key typically look like compared with a public key. Thanks.

[ranochigo]

So what would the exact file address be Users\Username\Apps\Roaming\Bitcoin\??, any help welcome.

C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Application data\Bitcoin (XP)

C:\Users\YourUserName\Appdata\Roaming\Bitcoin (Vista and 7)

Also, what would a private key typically look like compared with a public key. Thanks.

A private key typically starts with a L, K or 5 for wallet import format.

It doesn't really matter. You are going to need look for file name that is wallet.dat or anything that ends with .dat. The wallet.dat is not in a human readable format so you likely cannot use that to search for it.

[morbius55]

Would i see private keys in wallet import format assuming i find any private keys on the drive, and are they always the same length of characters?. thanks again.

[khufuking]

Which wallet were you using?
Nobody has asked this, so I think I should.

Was it Core? pywallet only works with Core wallets.
If not, there's still a chance, maybe you can contact a bitcoin recovery service.

I know that the wallet was installed i think in 2013 so assuming it is core?. Thanks.

Hmm you have 32 BTC and you do not know the wallet you used   Anyway whatever software you use to recover remember to recover files on different drive it is really important .

[LoyceV]

Just had a preliminary search of the drive using recuva but only let it run for 15 minutes before it was indicating that it had found 10's of thousands of files. Why so many?

No offense, but if this is the level of questions you're asking while searching to recover $84k, I'd say STOP IT NOW and hire a professional data recovery service.

[morbius55]

Are public keys 33 characters long and private keys 51 characters long always?. Thanks.

[morbius55]

Just had a preliminary search of the drive using recuva but only let it run for 15 minutes before it was indicating that it had found 10's of thousands of files. Why so many?

No offense, but if this is the level of questions you're asking while searching to recover $84k, I'd say STOP IT NOW and hire a professional data recovery service.

Fair comment, but if i can find the info i need then i would rather try myself and avoid possibly being ripped off. Thanks.

[Gamepakhsh]

try
https://www.easeus.com/partition-recovery/

[morbius55]

Will a private key show as a 51 character string starting with 5, or will it be in another form?, when searching the hdd. Thanks.

[HCP]

Generally, most wallet files will encrypt the private keys... and they'll be stored in possibly binary or hex format. Attempting to identify them simply by scanning bytes on the harddrive is going to be like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.