Maybe a dumb question...but looking for an answer

[fme]

Sorry to anyone that reads this, and feels like they wasted their time.

To preface:  I am not super tech savvy, but I am not tech illiterate.  Let me also say this--I was in college at the time of all of this, and let's just say, some of my memory is hazy.

In 2009, I learned about Bitcoin.  I remember taking the time to look up how to mine Bitcoin, and found it interesting.  I took the time to download, and install, and begin to run the mining software.  At the time, I had very little clue what was going on.  I remember going through the steps to set everything up. I even vaguely remember watching it work (numbers and stuff).  I had no idea what any of it meant, but know that I ran the software for some time---how much, I'm not sure, could be 1 hour, could be a few days or a month. 

I have always remembered doing this, and it has even come up in conversation with some buddies of mine from the time period. 

Now, within a year of downloading, installing, and running the software, I bought a new computer.  Something happened with the one I had the software on, and the warranty was out, so I just upgraded computers.  I still have the HDD though.

Now, I guess my question has a couple of parts:

1.  Is it possible that I set everything up, ran the software, and somehow mined any bitcoin? (If no, then ignore the rest, and sorry for wasting your time)
2.  Is it possible that I have it still on that HDD from that computer in a wallet?
3.  Is there a way to retrieve it?

I know this all seems a little nuts--just know that I have kept this in mind since 2009, which is why I still have the computer and the HDD--I have destroyed computers and HDDs since, but have held onto this one.  Perhaps I'm crazy, but before I went and wasted a bunch of time, I wanted to get some outsiders thoughts that may know more than me.

Sorry for the long post, and don't know if any of it makes sense. 

Thanks

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[Velkro]

1.  Is it possible that I set everything up, ran the software, and somehow mined any bitcoin? (If no, then ignore the rest, and sorry for wasting your time)
2.  Is it possible that I have it still on that HDD from that computer in a wallet?
3.  Is there a way to retrieve it?

1. no, you must specifically made it to cpu mine, and probability of this is so low, that you will win 100 times in euro millions or similiar famous lottery.
2. nothing to add then
3. nothing to add then

sorry to disapoint you

[HabBear]

1.  Is it possible that I set everything up, ran the software, and somehow mined any bitcoin? (If no, then ignore the rest, and sorry for wasting your time)
2.  Is it possible that I have it still on that HDD from that computer in a wallet?
3.  Is there a way to retrieve it?

1. no, you must specifically made it to cpu mine, and probability of this is so low, that you will win 100 times in euro millions or similiar famous lottery.

Based on the OP's vague description, what makes you so sure this person did not make it to "cpu mine" as part of the steps? The probability has nothing to do with it.

To the OP, forget about 1., if you have the hard drive...let's poke around and see what we can find! What's the worse that can happen? You lose a few hours of time treasuring hunting. Block awards at that time were 50BTC, so if you earned just one award you could have 50BTC or $700,000.

Seems like it could be worth the search.

[fme]

1.  Is it possible that I set everything up, ran the software, and somehow mined any bitcoin? (If no, then ignore the rest, and sorry for wasting your time)
2.  Is it possible that I have it still on that HDD from that computer in a wallet?
3.  Is there a way to retrieve it?

1. no, you must specifically made it to cpu mine, and probability of this is so low, that you will win 100 times in euro millions or similiar famous lottery.

Based on the OP's vague description, what makes you so sure this person did not make it to "cpu mine" as part of the steps? The probability has nothing to do with it.

To the OP, forget about 1., if you have the hard drive...let's poke around and see what we can find! What's the worse that can happen? You lose a few hours of time treasuring hunting. Block awards at that time were 50BTC, so if you earned just one award you could have 50BTC or $700,000.

Seems like it could be worth the search.

Like you said--based on my vague description, and vague memory--I do not know if I set to "cpu mine" or not.  I suppose I need to just plug in the HDD and see if it is in working order (hopefully it is).  A few hours of my time is worth it.  Even if I don't find any bitcoin in the wallet, I'm sure there are some documents and things on there that would be worth a blast from the past.  What's the worst that could happen?  I don't find a treasure, that I already don't have?

I will probably start the process on Wednesday this week.  With the holidays, have a lot of family stuff going on.  I will keep you up to date.

Any suggestions?

If I find the wallet.dat file, how will I know if there is anything in it of value? Or will I need to import it to a new wallet to find out?  I know that I will need to save the wallet.dat file multiple times before I do anything with it.

Thanks!

[Coinster]

Like you said--based on my vague description, and vague memory--I do not know if I set to "cpu mine" or not.  I suppose I need to just plug in the HDD and see if it is in working order (hopefully it is).  A few hours of my time is worth it.  Even if I don't find any bitcoin in the wallet, I'm sure there are some documents and things on there that would be worth a blast from the past.  What's the worst that could happen?  I don't find a treasure, that I already don't have?

I will probably start the process on Wednesday this week.  With the holidays, have a lot of family stuff going on.  I will keep you up to date.

Any suggestions?

If I find the wallet.dat file, how will I know if there is anything in it of value? Or will I need to import it to a new wallet to find out?  I know that I will need to save the wallet.dat file multiple times before I do anything with it.

Thanks!

Holy crap. You may have won the lottery. I don't want to get your hopes up for nothing but I'll tell you what I know of Bitcoin, as you say an experienced user's perspective, and you may find it helpful.

Bitcoin has gone through various stages. It was introduced October 2008 and the network started up with the first blocks mined January 2009. At that early time there was pretty much nobody on the network besides Satoshi. As word spread a few others joined but there was still pretty much nobody even I'd estimate months later (say < 1,000-5,000 people). Now, surely there were some people. That's why I don't think you're just making this up. People wouldn't have thought it a big deal at the time. My point is the coins mined then would have been many because difficulty would have been so low compared to today.

One thing I'm pretty certain of is you were mining Bitcoins. At that early time the entire focus of the software would have been mining. People didn't even have anybody to send bitcoins to so the 'wallet' part of the software wasn't emphasized.

The only question then is whether you found anything or not. For that I'll relate a bit of my own history. I heard about Bitcoin some time in 2010 but dismissed it. By the time I dove in it was around December 2010 and I started running the mining software. I ran it for maybe 4 hours and didn't find anything, but this was an ordinary PC and I knew interest was already getting significant so I didn't really expect anything. I figured it would be easier to buy any coins I wanted. Your timeline would have been different, though. Way back in 2009 even mining for a few hours might have found at least one block which would be 50 coins (now worth over $500K) and maybe several. To put things in perspective realize finding blocks was so easy at one point people had several thousand bitcoins. They had so many one guy famously bought a $14 pizza using 10,000 bitcoins.  

So that means... there is a higher chance you found at least a few coins than there is that you found nothing, if you were on the network early enough, even if you only mined a few hours.

So next steps? Obviously guard that harddrive with your life lol  

Seriously, guard that harddrive  

As you say you're going to need to find out what's on it. But you have several things going for you. Even a damaged drive can have data recovered from it. In the worst case you might need to research into and undertake specialized data forensics of the kind the FBI uses, but that's in the unlikely event the drive can't be read normally. Even if files were deleted they may be recoverable. That's how persistent the data is. Just keep the thing away from any big magnets.

If you can access the drive then, yes, the first thing you'd do is back up important looking files several times. Of course the main file you're looking for is wallet.dat, but if that's not there it may not be the end of the story. As I said the software has underwent a lot of changes, including how data is stored. For as long as I can remember the file has been wallet.dat, but it may have been stored some other way early on. If you start poking around and find something interesting, but run into a wall and can't go any further I'd try to ask Gavin Andresen. He's still around in the Bitcoin community and fairly easy to contact (he hangs around reddit.com/r/btc and has a twitter for example). Gavin was one of the earliest programmers to work on Bitcoin besides Satoshi, so he'd know.

Best of luck, my friend! Of course it goes without saying, don't give anyone any exposure to any private keys you find as you seek any further help.

[fme]

Coinster,

Thank you for the reply.

No need to worry about getting my hopes up!  I am fully expecting to find nothing--If I find something there, I will celebrate later!  I will admit that my interest is definitely piqued, and I have thought about this quite a bit the last couple of days.

I am going to begin the process tomorrow.  First step--plug the hdd in (to a computer not hooked up to the web!), and see if it works.  Hopefully it does, but I am expecting the worst.  If it does NOT work, I am not sure what my next step will be, but I will have to figure it out!  If it DOES work, I think I have a pretty good handle on how to track down the 'wallet.dat' file.  If I get that far, I know that I need to make copies, and back up.  From there--I have no clue what my next step is to find out if anything is on it.  Any help with that would be greatly appreciated.

I know that I ran the program in 2009, as I bought a new computer in January of 2010.  I don't remember how I heard of Bitcoin, but I am sure I ran across it on the internet somewhere.  And I was just good enough with computers to be able to track down and understand how to get the program up and running.  After that, I was probably lost.  I know that I never checked for a wallet file, and I don't know if the program would have told me that I had solved any of the problems or not--I definitely don't remember anything along those lines.

It will be interesting, and hopefully rewarding!  Again though, not expecting much.  Just know that after reading a couple responses to my post, and researching on the internet about it, I have to attempt it.

I will keep you up to date with anything I come across!

Thanks!

[Vod]

If I find the wallet.dat file, how will I know if there is anything in it of value?

Be wary regarding the PMs you are going to receive from scammers offering to help.  If you send your wallet.dat to anyone, you will lose your coins!

[fme]

If I find the wallet.dat file, how will I know if there is anything in it of value?

Be wary regarding the PMs you are going to receive from scammers offering to help.  If you send your wallet.dat to anyone, you will lose your coins!

No doubt!  I appreciate the heads up.  I definitely do not trust anyone, so I would not have done that, but always nice to have your own thoughts reinforced.

What is the cliche?  I was born at night, but not last night!

[aplistir]

1. no, you must specifically made it to cpu mine, and probability of this is so low, that you will win 100 times in euro millions or similiar famous lottery.

Based on the OP's vague description, what makes you so sure this person did not make it to "cpu mine" as part of the steps? The probability has nothing to do with it.

Like you said--based on my vague description, and vague memory--I do not know if I set to "cpu mine" or not.  I suppose I need to just plug in the HDD and see if it is in working order (hopefully it is).

If I find the wallet.dat file, how will I know if there is anything in it of value? Or will I need to import it to a new wallet to find out?  I know that I will need to save the wallet.dat file multiple times before I do anything with it.

You did not have to configure Bitcoin to mine. All the early versions of Bitcoin (later Bitcoin-qt)) started mining when you started the program. And mining was easy as difficulty was only 1 during the whole year of 2009. If you mined for a full day you probably found 1-4 blocks even with a medium range CPU.

And you wont find a wallet.dat file. because I think it was named "wallet" (or was it bitcoin ??) at that time.

An added bonus is that if you do find your wallet file, it wont even be encrypted, because that was not an option.... So you could get your private keys by just reading the wallet file.  

Good luck to you, OP.

[fme]

Well, after about 2 hours of hunting. I have found nothing—about what I expected. No wallet, bitcoin, or any files of the sort. If anyone has any tips on searching—let me know.

I’m afraid that I may have deleted the files/program to make room for something else. I’m going to look into recovery of lost files, but it does seem unlikely now. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Coinster]

Well, after about 2 hours of hunting. I have found nothing—about what I expected. No wallet, bitcoin, or any files of the sort. If anyone has any tips on searching—let me know.

I’m afraid that I may have deleted the files/program to make room for something else. I’m going to look into recovery of lost files, but it does seem unlikely now. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

That sucks!  

I was really hoping for a better end to this story too. Well, as for deleted files they can be recovered. On Windows when you delete files they are only marked to be deleted, not actually deleted. They are not actually deleted until they are overwritten. At least, that's how it used to work (when I researched several years ago). That would be the easiest way to recover files as it's as simple as following readily available instructions.

If the files were overwritten things become more murky... They might still be recovered but it's not in the least easy. If you have, as you say, a solid state hard drive then data is stored via a magnetic writing process. When you delete files and they are overwritten the head passes over the area where the prior file was stored to change the information. This process isn't 100% effective. There are often still traces of the prior information. An FBI level forensic analysis can sometimes be successful recovering files which were deleted and even overwritten. Many people don't know this but I recalled this during the media blow up of Hillary Clinton being asked if she "wiped" the infamous email drives (where she deleted emails), which were recovered and she asked "you mean with a cloth? I don't know how that works." LOL  

Of course, that level of file recovery isn't light nor I imagine inexpensive to undertake. If you have millions of dollars locked on that drive, then sure it's probably worth it to attempt recovery. The open question is whether or not you successfully mined any coins. For that, again, it depends on how early you were on the network. There are roughly 6 blocks every hour. Let's say in February 2009 36 people had heard of and were mining Bitcoin. If none of them ever disconnected then the law of averages says after 6 hours each person would be guaranteed to have mined at least 1 block or 4 per day for 200 bitcoins. Given that people had thousands, even tens of thousands of bitcoins I have no doubt there were periods when the network looked similar to this and people left their machines running daily with no other competition! There probably were also people that mined a bit and disconnected after some time like yourself. So it comes down to how early you were on the network added to how long you mined when connected. Only you would have any idea about that and therein lies the probability of how many bitcoins might be on that drive.

[ICOselector2018z]

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