How am I supposed to get over the anxiety and depression involved in all this?

[BullCreek]

I was an early adopter. I never used the Silkroad or anything like that. I just liked collecting odd things. I bought 50 btc from a friend back in 2011 and just kept them in a private wallet since.
Well that Hard drive is now dead. I've been sporadically trying for years to get it to work. I'm at a total loss here. The market is at an all time high, and Im not sure another bear market is coming back.
I never had money to invest in this in the first place. But what little I did have I would throw into MTGOX (lol) and lost that shit too. After the GOX incident I took a couple years off of cryptos. I still had my private wallet I thought, until I went to retrieve it in 2015 and my hard drive was compromised somehow. I have 5 mill RDD/ 5 mill DOGE and 50 btc on that drive.
 Now it's at an all time high again and I am still broke. What am I doing wrong? 

[1714990041]

1714990041

[1714990041]

1714990041

[BillyBobZorton]

What am I doing wrong? 

It seems obvious to me that what you are doing wrong is not making enough backups. I have backups in 3 different hardrives, 2 pendrives, and I even put some wallets on some floppy disk just for fun and to see if they will resist the test of time. The more places you save wallets the better.

What were you thinking to leave 50 BTC in a single place?

When did the hard drive failure happen?

[Kprawn]

There are companies out there that specialize in data recovery. Take some spare cash and pay these people to retrieve the

information from that drive, if you cannot do it yourself. If you want to do it yourself, make sure you make a clone of the

drive, if it is readable. I have a harddrive docking station that does that with a click of a single button.  

[thejaytiesto]

I was an early adopter. I never used the Silkroad or anything like that. I just liked collecting odd things. I bought 50 btc from a friend back in 2011 and just kept them in a private wallet since.
Well that Hard drive is now dead. I've been sporadically trying for years to get it to work. I'm at a total loss here. The market is at an all time high, and Im not sure another bear market is coming back.
I never had money to invest in this in the first place. But what little I did have I would throw into MTGOX (lol) and lost that shit too. After the GOX incident I took a couple years off of cryptos. I still had my private wallet I thought, until I went to retrieve it in 2015 and my hard drive was compromised somehow. I have 5 mill RDD/ 5 mill DOGE and 50 btc on that drive.
 Now it's at an all time high again and I am still broke. What am I doing wrong? 

Damn, that's $164,000 right now... but yeah, you definitely fucked up big time by saving your wallet on a hardrive and that's about. You should have tons of backups. The more money you have, the more backups and time you should invest in your backups and security.

I understand that back in 2011 it wasn't that much, but you should have seen the price grow enough for you to raise some alarms at the fact that you were holding that money on a single point of failure.

Does the hardrive make any noises when you boot the computer? Maybe you can send it to some of these forensic experts and they can recover it. I just hope that you put a password on the wallet, but im not sure if in 2011 the client allowed for passwords yet..

[IIOII]

1) I'm not sure if I believe your story

2) Hire a data recovery professional to try to retrieve your wallet data

3) Try to get a job (if you're currently jobless)

4) It's never too late to buy BTC

[bluefirecorp]

I was an early adopter. I never used the Silkroad or anything like that. I just liked collecting odd things. I bought 50 btc from a friend back in 2011 and just kept them in a private wallet since.
Well that Hard drive is now dead. I've been sporadically trying for years to get it to work. I'm at a total loss here. The market is at an all time high, and Im not sure another bear market is coming back.
I never had money to invest in this in the first place. But what little I did have I would throw into MTGOX (lol) and lost that shit too. After the GOX incident I took a couple years off of cryptos. I still had my private wallet I thought, until I went to retrieve it in 2015 and my hard drive was compromised somehow. I have 5 mill RDD/ 5 mill DOGE and 50 btc on that drive.
 Now it's at an all time high again and I am still broke. What am I doing wrong? 

This incident have already happened with many users here including me, bitcoin has sometimes given me big losses but also some good profits. There are many such ups and downs in bitcoin, but we need to overcome them and try to move ahead. If you have some loss, leave it and try to cover it with double profit. Thinking this will surely give you more profit.

[Kaller]

I was an early adopter. I never used the Silkroad or anything like that. I just liked collecting odd things. I bought 50 btc from a friend back in 2011 and just kept them in a private wallet since.
Well that Hard drive is now dead. I've been sporadically trying for years to get it to work. I'm at a total loss here. The market is at an all time high, and Im not sure another bear market is coming back.
I never had money to invest in this in the first place. But what little I did have I would throw into MTGOX (lol) and lost that shit too. After the GOX incident I took a couple years off of cryptos. I still had my private wallet I thought, until I went to retrieve it in 2015 and my hard drive was compromised somehow. I have 5 mill RDD/ 5 mill DOGE and 50 btc on that drive.
 Now it's at an all time high again and I am still broke. What am I doing wrong? 

What you did wrong is not take care of the hard drive in 2015 when the Bitcoin price was still quite high.
Even 50 Bitcoin in 2015 was worth like $25,000.
You should have taken better care of that hard drive.
Now, there are MANY services out there to help recover your data.
I recommend https://walletrecoveryservices.com/ they are extremely professional and will help you as this is a large amount.
All the best.

[cafucafucafu]

Oh god that's a small fortune right there, what price did you buy the bitcoin for? I don't think you ever will get over that decision, but you can try recovering the hard drive. There are companies out there that can probably recover all of that data, but I am not sure of the prices.

It's no point blaming him for keeping all that bitcoin in an unsafe place and not getting backups of it. At the time bitcoin would probably just be a couple of dollars and no one would be bothered to do that much for 100$.

[Coin-Keeper]

If this account/story is true there are places totally beyond normal recovery services.  Try reading around Steve Gibson's website about some commercial tools.  Failing that, there are consummate pros that can disassemble and examine the drive platter with amazing results.  No PM's please.  I am just trying to help give you a starting point.

[The One]

I was an early adopter. I never used the Silkroad or anything like that. I just liked collecting odd things. I bought 50 btc from a friend back in 2011 and just kept them in a private wallet since.
Well that Hard drive is now dead. I've been sporadically trying for years to get it to work. I'm at a total loss here. The market is at an all time high, and Im not sure another bear market is coming back.
I never had money to invest in this in the first place. But what little I did have I would throw into MTGOX (lol) and lost that shit too. After the GOX incident I took a couple years off of cryptos. I still had my private wallet I thought, until I went to retrieve it in 2015 and my hard drive was compromised somehow. I have 5 mill RDD/ 5 mill DOGE and 50 btc on that drive.
 Now it's at an all time high again and I am still broke. What am I doing wrong? 

If you are practical with your hands then do what i did when my hard drive stopped working 10 ish years ago.

In a clean room with no dust.

1. Buy a cheap second-hand working hard drive and must be the same model as your dead hard drive.
2. Remove both hard drive casing.
3. Remove the disc platters from your second-hand hard drive.
4. Very carefully remove the disc platters from your dead hard drive.
5. Very carefully put the disc platters into the second-hand hard drive.
6. Make sure it is done properly.
7. Put the casing back together.
8. Connect the hard drive to your computer and pray to god that there is no damage to your disc platters. (most hard drive failures are mechanical)
9. Retrieve all data (wallet.dat first) you want to keep and copy them to another brand new hard drive. (I am assuming you have one already)
10. Start Bitcoin and check the wallet is ok.
11. Make multiples copies on at least 2 different storage device. Keep 1 and store the other with someone you can trust i.e your parent. This is just in case your house has the misfortune of being burnt down.

Let me know if that works.

[Minecache]

I was an early adopter. I never used the Silkroad or anything like that. I just liked collecting odd things. I bought 50 btc from a friend back in 2011 and just kept them in a private wallet since.
Well that Hard drive is now dead. I've been sporadically trying for years to get it to work. I'm at a total loss here. The market is at an all time high, and Im not sure another bear market is coming back.
I never had money to invest in this in the first place. But what little I did have I would throw into MTGOX (lol) and lost that shit too. After the GOX incident I took a couple years off of cryptos. I still had my private wallet I thought, until I went to retrieve it in 2015 and my hard drive was compromised somehow. I have 5 mill RDD/ 5 mill DOGE and 50 btc on that drive.
 Now it's at an all time high again and I am still broke. What am I doing wrong? 

You're not paranoid enough.

[European Central Bank]

the only problem is professional data recovery from a dead drive might cost more than a few dollars. it's a serious and delicate business. that's still by far the best option. get some quotes from trusted companies and go from there.

if there's any chance of getting it back then you have to take it. very few people can buy that amount any more.

[btccashacc]

It reminds me of a story from the guy who threw it out his hardware wallet containing 7500 bitcoins. Well if i were you i would find a professional technician to recover the hard wallet yeah i might spend much for this but it doesn't matter, it's all about to get my 50 bitcoins or 140k dollars back. In 2011 Bitcoin's price was really cheap, that's why people were not too worried about their bitcoins and what would happen in the future, let this be a lesson to the rest of us, it's very important to write down a backup of your wallet, especially the hardware wallet.

[ice098]

I was an early adopter. I never used the Silkroad or anything like that. I just liked collecting odd things. I bought 50 btc from a friend back in 2011 and just kept them in a private wallet since.
Well that Hard drive is now dead. I've been sporadically trying for years to get it to work. I'm at a total loss here. The market is at an all time high, and Im not sure another bear market is coming back.
I never had money to invest in this in the first place. But what little I did have I would throw into MTGOX (lol) and lost that shit too. After the GOX incident I took a couple years off of cryptos. I still had my private wallet I thought, until I went to retrieve it in 2015 and my hard drive was compromised somehow. I have 5 mill RDD/ 5 mill DOGE and 50 btc on that drive.
 Now it's at an all time high again and I am still broke. What am I doing wrong? 

Just find an it expert that can help you regarding your problem. It is good to have another options dont lose hope. Dont overthink it doesnt help you but rather it only makes you feel that way so be careful next time and dont depressed too much.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

1) I'm not sure if I believe your story

2) Hire a data recovery professional to try to retrieve your wallet data

3) Try to get a job (if you're currently jobless)

4) It's never too late to buy BTC

I'm not sure if I believe it either. Half the stuff on this forum is total crap--but man, would that suck if it were true. 

But yeah, I would have no doubt some smart computer people could restore his drive.   All is not lost.

Failing that,  there are many good antidepressants on the market,  and anxiolytics that you could choose from, as well as therapists.   And it is true:  It's not too late to buy bitcoin!

[ultraspiritual]

Oh damn, yet another stark reminder for backing up

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[Taras]

If the contents of the drive are worth $160,000 you should probably be investing in trying to recover it with professionals before investing in more crypto

[rjbtc2017]

It's really sad to read what happened to your coins, It's already 2017, i think there are lot of new ways to recover your coins.
Try recovering it not by yourself buy by professionals, that's really worth recovering, but you need to put a lot of effort here and learn your lesson to keep your things backup-ed always, best of luck to you mate, hoping for the best.

[alphabetacanary]

I agree with what others have posted here.  The hard drive failure is likely mechanical and the data stored on the platter is probably still readable.  Good luck.

[chixka000]

I was an early adopter. I never used the Silkroad or anything like that. I just liked collecting odd things. I bought 50 btc from a friend back in 2011 and just kept them in a private wallet since.
Well that Hard drive is now dead. I've been sporadically trying for years to get it to work. I'm at a total loss here. The market is at an all time high, and Im not sure another bear market is coming back.
I never had money to invest in this in the first place. But what little I did have I would throw into MTGOX (lol) and lost that shit too. After the GOX incident I took a couple years off of cryptos. I still had my private wallet I thought, until I went to retrieve it in 2015 and my hard drive was compromised somehow. I have 5 mill RDD/ 5 mill DOGE and 50 btc on that drive.
 Now it's at an all time high again and I am still broke. What am I doing wrong? 

That is life brother, That is the reason why i always do have a backup files for a certain system especially bitcoin but more important is that i do make sure that i always get a profit for every single investment that i have