Recover BitCoins from an old IDE hard drive

[Sara Smit]

Hi to all !

Back in 2010 (or 2011) I bought (or purchased) a BitCoins. I don't remember anymore from where and from whom I bought it and how much I paid for it ...
I remember that I have downloaded what I should download (I don't remember anymore what I have done then back in the time) and I remember that I have deleted from my e-mail account all data and traces of my purchase and I remember that I saved it on one of my IDE hard drive which I wanted to use as offline BitCoins storage. I have disconected that HD and I forgot for this HD until now when I see that I maybe have on one of my old hard drives a little bit of some values, let's say money ...
But ...
I have one old PC which is disconnected from internet with "Ubuntu 16.04" on the USB drive and I start it from USB and I want to connect and to check all my old IDE HD drives that I have but I don't know what should I look for and how should I do it with in "Ubuntu" ? I have no "Windows machine" to try it in "Windows"...
I read something about "private keys" and "wallet.dat" files and some "...52 long characters of something..." or something what I don't understand what is this...
Could someone help me with that to find out if I still have those BitCoins somewhere on some of my old IDE HDD's ? Where shoul I begin and what are the steps... ?
Thanks in advance.

Greetings from Sara.

[1715240618]

1715240618

[1715240618]

1715240618

[CryptoPlay]

if you think you used Bitcoin in the early days with a client program, search your hard drive for a file named “wallet.dat.”

[ccie38216]

If you believe that this wallet is that old than chances are it does not have any encryption on it in which case private keys are displayed unencrypted in the wallet.dat file.

On Windows XP you can find the old bitcoin-qt wallet in C:\Documents and Settings\Users\YourUserName\Appdata\Roaming\Bitcoin

On Windows Vista and 7 the wallet will be in C:\Users\YourUserName\Appdata\Roaming\BitCoin

Once you find the old wallet, extract the private keys and add them onto electrum and then transfer the funds to a hardware wallet if you have one

[techniumunlimited]

Best chance is to use a hard drive recovery software -- a common win7 used one is Recuva

[LoyceV]

Back in 2010 (or 2011) I bought (or purchased) a BitCoins. I don't remember anymore from where and from whom I bought it and how much I paid for it ...

I see threads like this a lot lately, but usually it turns out they bought the Bitcoins later than they thought. If it's really 2010-2011, you could have turned every dollar you spent into a million dollars now.

I have one old PC which is disconnected from internet with "Ubuntu 16.04" on the USB drive and I start it from USB and I want to connect and to check all my old IDE HD drives that I have but I don't know what should I look for and how should I do it with in "Ubuntu" ? I have no "Windows machine" to try it in "Windows"...
I read something about "private keys" and "wallet.dat" files and some "...52 long characters of something..." or something what I don't understand what is this...
Could someone help me with that to find out if I still have those BitCoins somewhere on some of my old IDE HDD's ? Where shoul I begin and what are the steps... ?

Go through the files, search for a wallet or anything that looks like it. It could even be a text-file. When you find it, before doing anything else, create a backup on a USB-stick. Then, create another backup!
Keep your wallet offline, don't copy it to an online computer, until you've figured out what to do with it. Good luck treasure hunting!

Best chance is to use a hard drive recovery software -- a common win7 used one is Recuva

You don't need to recover anything when it hasn't been deleted.

[Sara Smit]

Thank all of you for a tips... I checked few old HD drives already but I didn't find anything, yet ... I have to check also old CD's if I maybe have back it up somwhere and somehow ... And it will take a long time to do this ...  And if I find it I know it could be a fortune but am I lucky one ... ?! Well, we'll find that out very soon ... Greetings from Sara !