bitcoin qt wallet on USB seems to be reseted - i fear i lost EVERYTHING!

[JJames]

That sucks man.

I would avoid using Windows for now and use a Live CD to start recovery software. If you're on a regular HDD there's a good chance that the part that contained the wallet.dat isn't physically overwritten yet. It might still be there, your filesystem just doesn't know about it anymore.

Did you keep a copy of the "messed up" wallet.dat? What happens when you load it (a copy of it!), does it have a completely different address?

[1715421248]

1715421248

[Knecke]

maybe you can try this: http://www.chip.de/downloads/Recuva_23935261.html

[TheD1ceMan]

maybe you can try this: http://www.chip.de/downloads/Recuva_23935261.html

hi knecke

i did, thanks anyway! thats the program i used to recover whatever was left to recover.

[TheD1ceMan]

That sucks man.

I would avoid using Windows for now and use a Live CD to start recovery software. If you're on a regular HDD there's a good chance that the part that contained the wallet.dat isn't physically overwritten yet. It might still be there, your filesystem just doesn't know about it anymore.

Did you keep a copy of the "messed up" wallet.dat? What happens when you load it (a copy of it!), does it have a completely different address?

i read that it sometimes a file is nit overwritten even if it says so. that just the index of where the file was is overwritten. at least thats what i understood with my limited konowledge. i am reading more to try to understand if this could be the case.
if i load a copy of the wallet i get an error code, saying that the wallet is damaged and can not be read.

[Birdy]

I think I've read something mentioned about scanning the whole volume for possible private keys. Don't know where though :/
But a program like this could help you.

[TheD1ceMan]

I think I've read something mentioned about scanning the whole volume for possible private keys. Don't know where though :/
But a program like this could help you.

hi birdy

could it be this by any chance?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=203394.msg2126091#msg2126091

[Cy Bo Rg]

however, i found other fileswuth names like "rev0043.dat". out of those approx. 50 files i was able to recover about 7. i am holding on to these hoping they might be good for something. but the wallet.dat definately seems to be f-up..

Hi everybody,I'm new here

Well,in my experience recovered files all have wrong names from the original (like your "rev0043.dat" file).
Thus,if you were lucky and you did recover the file you need,just COPY&BACKUP ALL THOSE RECOVERED FILES, change the names OF THE COPIES into the original name of the file you have lost,and you should just have to try all those ".dat" files until you find the one that works.

Hope this helps  


EDIT : p.s. : if you've got some money to spend(for a recovery expert in your city/country),I would like to let you know that you can totally revert the state of clusters so to be able to see the changes in your hard drive since it started operating...By this I mean you can even recover you ex-ex-ex-ex-gf pictures you deleted 3 years ago; in fact,there's no such thing as "deletion" when playing with hard disks (unless you use some special algorithm which scrambles data before deletion).

[Knecke]

I think I've read something mentioned about scanning the whole volume for possible private keys. Don't know where though :/
But a program like this could help you.

hi birdy

could it be this by any chance?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=203394.msg2126091#msg2126091

if you know one of your addresses you used than you can search in the recovered files for it the addresses are in the wallet file.
or you can search the pattern: "defaultkey"
then you know its the wallet file.

[TheD1ceMan]

cy bo rg and birdy: i will try both your methods tomorrow! i still haven't lost hope. thanks to both of you and ofcourse to everybody else!

[JJames]

That sucks man.

I would avoid using Windows for now and use a Live CD to start recovery software. If you're on a regular HDD there's a good chance that the part that contained the wallet.dat isn't physically overwritten yet. It might still be there, your filesystem just doesn't know about it anymore.

Did you keep a copy of the "messed up" wallet.dat? What happens when you load it (a copy of it!), does it have a completely different address?

i read that it sometimes a file is nit overwritten even if it says so. that just the index of where the file was is overwritten. at least thats what i understood with my limited konowledge. i am reading more to try to understand if this could be the case.
if i load a copy of the wallet i get an error code, saying that the wallet is damaged and can not be read.

The physical file isn't always overwritten indeed. When you delete something you basically tell your filesystem to mark that spot on the harddrive as free again. The actual data is still there, your filesystem just has no way to reference to it anymore.  That is best case scenario. Recovery programs will be able to recover the files (not the names though, as they were stored in the filesystem) most of the time. If it has been overwritten (eventually you will write to that spot that is marked as "free") there is still a chance, but afaik only with specialized hardware, to recover pieces of the data.