Possible to back up wallet.dat file by dragging and not backing up manually?

[p3rplexamous]

Hi everyone.

A few years ago I gave my brother BTC for XMAS. He hasnt touched it since and was using Bitcoin QT at the time. We are looking to transfer the funds to a hardware wallet, but when getting him to upload his wallet.dat file, we ran into a snag. It seems he didn't do an actual back up of the wallet app, and instead, had a time machine back up of the computers hard drive made, and when he gained access, we grabbed the wallet.dat file from his bitcoin folder. When loading it into the app on my computer, the funds are coming up as 0. I checked the address on blockchain.info and the funds are still there.

Any suggestions? Can you make a usable backup via dragging and dropping the .dat file as opposed to backing it up manually?

Bitcoin Client Software and Version Number: Bitcoin Core 0.15.1
Operating System: OSX 10.13.1
System Hardware Specs: 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 with 8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 and 50 GB free hard drive space.
Description of Problem: Bitcoin Core isnt loading wallet.dat file.

[HCP]

1. Is your Bitcoin Core fully synced? Current block height is: 497663 (you can check in "Help -> Debug Window")
2. Did you try starting Bitcoin Core with -rescan to force it to rescan for transactions after you put the wallet.dat into your Bitcoin Core datadir? (I hope you remembered to take a backup of your own wallet.dat before overwriting it )

[legend018]

It doesn't matter how you copied the .dat file. You can drag it, back it up with a backup program or copy it.  As long as it's the wallet.dat file that you need.

[kahc]

Hi everyone.

A few years ago I gave my brother BTC for XMAS. He hasnt touched it since and was using Bitcoin QT at the time. We are looking to transfer the funds to a hardware wallet, but when getting him to upload his wallet.dat file, we ran into a snag. It seems he didn't do an actual back up of the wallet app, and instead, had a time machine back up of the computers hard drive made, and when he gained access, we grabbed the wallet.dat file from his bitcoin folder. When loading it into the app on my computer, the funds are coming up as 0. I checked the address on blockchain.info and the funds are still there.

Any suggestions? Can you make a usable backup via dragging and dropping the .dat file as opposed to backing it up manually?

Bitcoin Client Software and Version Number: Bitcoin Core 0.15.1
Operating System: OSX 10.13.1
System Hardware Specs: 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 with 8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 and 50 GB free hard drive space.
Description of Problem: Bitcoin Core isnt loading wallet.dat file.

If you don't want to wait for Bitcoin QT to download the the whole blockchain, you have to use a SPV wallet like Electrum.

In Bitcoin-qt:
1. Click 'help' -> 'debug window' -> 'console' tab
2. If you wallet is encrypted, unlock it by typing   walletpassphrase "your wallet password" 600
3. Type 'dumpwallet privatekeys.txt ' without the single-quotes.

Wallet keys will then be dumped to privatekeys.txt in readable format.
Create a new wallet in Electrum, and use sweep function to sweep the private keys.

[bob123]

In Bitcoin-qt:
1. Click 'help' -> 'debug window' -> 'console' tab
2. If you wallet is encrypted, unlock it by typing   walletpassphrase "your wallet password" 600
3. Type 'dumpwallet privatekeys.txt ' without the single-quotes.

Wallet keys will then be dumped to privatekeys.txt in readable format.
Create a new wallet in Electrum, and use sweep function to sweep the private keys.

Thats the solution to your problem. But if you have stored 'larger' amounts of BTC on this old wallet you may be more cautious when doing this on your everyday-pc.
There is always the risk of malware waiting to grab private keys out of the ram/clipboard and stealing funds.
The safer way would be to (initially make a backup of your wallet.dat) use a bootable linux disk to do the dump/import of your priv keys.
Either with the core (linux-)wallet or pywallet. There are quite a few tutorials available online.

And to awnser your initial question: It doesn't matter whether you copy/paste your file or 'drag' it into another location.

[Spendulus]

Hi everyone.

A few years ago I gave my brother BTC for XMAS. He hasnt touched it since and was using Bitcoin QT at the time. We are looking to transfer the funds to a hardware wallet, but when getting him to upload his wallet.dat file, we ran into a snag. It seems he didn't do an actual back up of the wallet app, and instead, had a time machine back up of the computers hard drive made, and when he gained access, we grabbed the wallet.dat file from his bitcoin folder. When loading it into the app on my computer, the funds are coming up as 0. I checked the address on blockchain.info and the funds are still there.

Any suggestions? Can you make a usable backup via dragging and dropping the .dat file as opposed to backing it up manually?

Bitcoin Client Software and Version Number: Bitcoin Core 0.15.1
Operating System: OSX 10.13.1
System Hardware Specs: 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 with 8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 and 50 GB free hard drive space.
Description of Problem: Bitcoin Core isnt loading wallet.dat file.

I have moved wallet.dat files back and forth many times. However, they were files generated and known compatible with the Core version I had in use.

Note. You have 50 GB, the block chain files are now about 130GB.

Therefore I don't know your problem is correctly stated. "The funds are coming up as 0", but what if it isn't synced and cannot ever get synced because of your storage limitations?

The conclusion "Core isn't loading wallet.dat file" does not seem the right conclusion. At least from these descriptions. Can you look at transactions or past history?