[Data Recovery Problem] Recovering many Wallet.dat from repartitioned Hard drive

[Praxis]

Nothing out of the ordinary. It's a DELL Inspiron 531 (desktop PC)

model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+

[jackjack]

Ok then my guess it definitely openssl

[Praxis]

Wow, seems to work now !!  

Code:

Private keys not decrypted: 5012
Trying all the remaining possibilities (645104) might take up to 1124 minutes.

It seems it already found many encrypted keys, but why does it go into this 18 hour process now? isn't it very likely it already found the right wallet(s) in the first step (where it tried the pass on the 42 possible wallets)? Or am I off the mark?

[jackjack]

First it tries to decrypt private keys only with the closer encryption parameters. Then if some private keys that are still not decrypted it will try all the remaining parameters (42 in your case).
I'll add a prompt to know if you want to stop after the first guesses.

I think too that it should be enough here. The other wallets may be altcoins you briefly tried.

[jackjack]

New and possibly last version: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=wuEZTqeL

You'll see things like this

Possible wallet: #1
   with passphrase #1
   with passphrase #2 ............
   with passphrase #3
   with passphrase #4

Possible wallet: #2
   with passphrase #1
   with passphrase #2
   with passphrase #3 ............
   with passphrase #4

Which shows you which passphrase unlocks which wallet

Then

Code:

Private keys not decrypted: %d
Trying all the remaining possibilities (%d) might take up to %d minutes.
Do you want to test them? (y/n): 

Just put 'n'

[Praxis]

Man, this last version works like a charm! I could run it with 6 passes and it created a recovered.dat! 

I just replaced the wallet.dat without downloading the blockchain first:

Code:

************************
EXCEPTION: 11DbException       
Db::open: Permission denied       
worldcoin in Runaway exception      

worldcoin-qt gives me this

I will try to replace the wallet.dat AFTER downloading the blockchain with a fresh wallet.dat

I tried running both with -rescan and -detachdb

[jackjack]

I'm glad it finally works!

"Permission denied" doesn't seem to be a problem from the wallet.
If it doesn't work please try with bitcoin-qt as worldcoin devs might have a different code (that I wouldn't plan to support in pywallet).

[Praxis]

I'm glad it finally works!

"Permission denied" doesn't seem to be a problem from the wallet.
If it doesn't work please try with bitcoin-qt as worldcoin devs might have a different code (that I wouldn't plan to support in pywallet).

Yeah, it say something like unable to load keypool or something like that now.
If the .dat is not "made" for other clients, perhaps I could try to import the keys one by one into the other clients or something.
I'll try to figure something out tomorrow.

Or maybe I should stop being lazy and learn Python so that I can contribute something 

[jackjack]

I know the keypool is empty, I may add keys if it avoids the error
Could you post it?

I really think all the wallets have the same format
Also, importing a key takes 0.5 second so it may take long
But yeah learning Python could be nice, even for you!

[Praxis]

I know the keypool is empty, I may add keys if it avoids the error
Could you post it?

I really think all the wallets have the same format
Also, importing a key takes 0.5 second so it may take long

So it means it should be possible, in theory, to recover even non-bitcoin wallets (alt-coins)?

I'm ashamed to admit but I don't understand what is a keypool or how to post it here.

I'm reading and Googling about these things now. I will try to educate myself.

Does the following apply - should I 'dump' my recovered wallet?

Code:

pywallet.py --passphrase="pass" --dumpwallet > dump.decrypted.txt


The dumpwallet command will dump the entire wallet (tx history, keypool order, labels, etc).  
For brevity you can print just the "keys" section (it includes the keys in the keypool).  
You don't need the "pool" section as it just contains the order of the keypool. 
 If you include a passphrase the keys will be decrypted. 
 If you do not include a passphrase the keys will be left in encrypted form.  
I use the encrypted option to print a disaster recovery (a backup for the backup) 
copy of all the company private keys which is stored off site in a fire rated safe.  
Yeah I am a little paranoid about backups but haven't lost a Satoshi yet.

I guess I'm still confused about how to get the coins even if I have the recovered wallet.

I'm trying to figure it out.

 

[jackjack]

I'm pretty sure that pywallet found your altcoin wallets.
Again, except maybe for some crazy ones. Try pywallet to dump a wallet from an altcoin, if it works, it's 99% sure the recovery would work

The keypool is a set of 100 (by default, but you can change it) "hidden" addresses. They are used for change (and generation if you are a miner).
By the way, you can add a pool address yourself. Using the pywallet WUI you can add a dummy address (private key = '000...001' for example) to a wallet and tell it to make it a pool address.

Yes, this would dump your recovered wallet. I misread, you asked if you should. Well it's as you wish... If you put that in the file, then keep in mind that there will be unencrypted private keys written on your hard drive.

If you have the recovered wallet, rename it 'wallet.dat' and put it in the bitcoin directory (~/.bitcoin) without forgetting to backup the current wallet.dat. Then

bitcoin-qt -rescan

[Praxis]

If you have the recovered wallet, rename it 'wallet.dat' and put it in the bitcoin directory (~/.bitcoin) without forgetting to backup the current wallet.dat. Then

bitcoin-qt -rescan

This worked. Since the wallets were not bitcoin wallets, even though Bitcoin recognizes the recovered wallet, it cannot detect or use the coins transferred to those addresses, normally, because they are alternative chains.

I'm pretty sure the structure of wallet.dat is same for all coins (what could be different, after all)? The changes within the coins is not related to the BerkeleyDB file.

What I'll try next is ... dump the keys from the recovered.dat and import them into an already-existing working Alt-coin wallet.

I think this should solve the problems. Looking for an elegant way to do this fast with Pywallet now.

[jackjack]

Great, now do the same thing with an altcoin client and it should work too

[Praxis]

Great, now do the same thing with an altcoin client and it should work too

Sorry for bringing this up again. you worked so hard to help me, I feel in your debt

After all this time I still haven't given up completely! Just took a long pause from this process.
I never could get the coins back. I still have the recovered .dat files ...
It just didn't load them into the *coin clients (if I replaced the wallet.dat)

Now I think it's simply because pywallet recovers only Bitcoin addresses
if I look into the recovered dat, all addresses start with "1" which is Bitcoin
Worldcoin addresses start with "W", for instance

[jackjack]

There is no addresses in the wallet files, there are only private and public keys (which do not contain '1' or 'W') so there is no difference between a Bitcoin wallet and a Litecoin one
I'm really interested in your recovered .dat files to see what could cause the problem
If you're OK with that, consider sending the bit/altcoins it contains to other addresses first

Maybe I'm wrong and I forget some settings that must contain an address, but even if it's the case your altcoin private keys must have been recovered