Need Help for Bitcoin Recovering

[swissmba]

I need your Help !!!
I Buy in 2009 some bitcoins without any knowledge.
Today I want to recovery my Wallet ... but i didnt find it...I renamed the file and im not able to find it.
I have a Big Extern HD with a lot files and im not able to find it.
I know only that i have (Berkeley, Phyton, Perl, JS) and i have a lot files.
I dont now where i buy it and i lose a second copy (Wallet Paper) ... but I have the number that was on it.
Problem i dont know how i can use this code (starting with 21F .... total length 26)
And maybe i have a copy renamed of the wallet.dat but renamed and im not able to find it.
Im sure that it was stored with another name ...with other extension.
I remeber only i buy It from a french company in Paris but i cant find the name ... and i received my Bitcoin in a self extract Email.
Currently I use a Mac and i make some terminal find and greps but its hard if you dont know what to search...maybe is it a word that is only used in Wallet.dat file that i can search?
i tried words like sha256, privkey, bitcoin, wallet ...
i know i had a copy of the original install programm too ...but didnt find it too.
The other problem is that i changed each year my computer and the username, i have a time machine save on another HD with 4 TB ... but its not easy the OSX changed 5 times since 2009 and i use actualy High Sierra, and the permission find on time machine save is not working pretty good (with sudo i have a lot permission message).
1 Bitcoin Reward for the one that give me the right advise that give me the recovery and use of it.
Thanks in Advance

[baobao2000]

Try to find the bitcoin wallte dat first.

Press the Windows Key and R at the same time to get the Run menu
Type in or copy %AppData%
Double click on Bitcoin

Or go to located at C:\Users\YourUserName\Appdata\Roaming\BitCoin

You should see multiple files, including blk001.dat and blkindex.dat (blockchain), as well as wallet.dat (your wallet file).

If you find wallet dat then make multiple copies just in case!

After that you can download and replace the wallet.dat and then compile the version of software from 2009.

Hope this help you

[swissmba]

Thanks for your advice but i didnt find this files ....

[Welsh]

How long is the code that you are talking about? Plus, can you remember which desktop wallet you used to generate the wallet file? You should be able to just search by extension within the hard drive. So the .dat part of the file, and that should yield results if they are there. If you've completely renamed the file, and got rid of the .dat part of it then this could be a little more tricky.

If there's a 1% chance of it being on that hard drive, and searching for it by name, and extension isn't working then your going to need to do some manual searching. If you've got any value to that wallet then it's got to be worth it. I would suggest organizing it as you go along to prevent this issue in the future, and prevent you from losing your place whilst searching through.

If for some reason it's not there, and you are 100% sure that you've at least stored it there for a little while then you could try some recovery programs to see if there's any data left. This might be a good idea to check first to prevent further writing to the drive.

[swissmba]

Thanks for your reply,
Im sure that it was stored with another name ...with other extension.
I didnt have the original PC that was under windows.
I have only 4TB HD full of programms and scripts... manualy i need months or years to check it.
I know i received a compressed file that installed (Berkeley, Python, PHP, Perl) on my disk and generated the Wallet.dat and i generated the Paper Wallet too (26 position starting with 21F).
It was in 2009 so im not able to remeber the wallet desktop i used ... i remeber only i buy It from a french company in Paris but i cant find the name ...
Currently I use a Mac and i make some terminal find and greps but its hard if you dont know what to search...maybe is it a word that is only used in Wallet.dat file that i can search?
i tried words like sha256, privkey, bitcoin, wallet ...
i know i had a copy of the original install programm too ...but didnt find it too.
The other problem is that i changed each year my computer and the username, i have a time machine save on another HD with 4 TB ... but its not easy the OSX changed 5 times since 2009 and i use actualy High Sierra, and the permission find on time machine save is not working pretty good (with sudo i have a lot permission message).

[Welsh]

You mention above that you bought the wallet? I'm assuming that you didn't use a traditional desktop wallet, and bought a hardware wallet. The only hardware wallet I know that was launched by a french start up was the Nano S. This is a device that you plug in via a USB slot. If this rings any bells then it could be the Nano S or a different hardware wallet.

I'm not sure what you mean by having a lot of files with Perl, PHP, Javascript, and Berkeley. But, if this is indeed related to your wallet then it has the framework for a web page. Which likely means it would be able to connect to a web page that you would then have a few more settings to tweak with or something alone those lines.

I haven't used hardware wallets so couldn't tell you which one would use all of these to tie into. However, if it was indeed a hardware wallet that you purchased then it could well make it a little easier to identify which one you had used, and whether they use a different extension to the normal .dat. Although, a few hardware wallets have Python dependencies.

Also, is it possible that you used a wallet sweeper of some sort? If so your data might be saved to a .txt file rather than a .dat file.

Ignoring the Perl, PHP, and the others Multibit uses the extension .wallet, but I assume you've already searched "wallet" anyway. It does sound to mean like you've downloaded a non traditional wallet management system which would probably of came from a Github source. You might want to check the programs that fit your description on there, and check their dependencies.

[HCP]

Thanks for your reply,
Im sure that it was stored with another name ...with other extension.
I didnt have the original PC that was under windows.
I have only 4TB HD full of programms and scripts... manualy i need months or years to check it.
I know i received a compressed file that installed (Berkeley, Python, PHP, Perl) on my disk and generated the Wallet.dat and i generated the Paper Wallet too (26 position starting with 21F).

Having renamed the file and changed the extension will likely be a big obstacle. You're effectively looking for a needle in a stack of needles... and you're not quite sure what your needle looks like

Currently I use a Mac and i make some terminal find and greps but its hard if you dont know what to search...maybe is it a word that is only used in Wallet.dat file that i can search?
i tried words like sha256, privkey, bitcoin, wallet ...

Maybe try and do a text search for "ckey" or "mkey" within the files...

Other than that, about the only other thing I can suggest is to try something like "PyWallet" or "KeyHunter" to scan the drive looking for wallets/keys... but be warned that it is likely to be very slow. I know it takes like 10 minutes to scan just a 1GB USB stick... so I assume it will take a LONG time to scan a 4TB harddrive.

[swissmba]

Thanks for your advice, i will try this search (Ckey, Mkey)

[swissmba]

A search with grep mkey or ckey give sooooo much files .... can you give me more advice?

[Lakai01]

You said that you have a string starting with 21F ... if you are lucky its your private key. Did you try to import this key to eg. Exodus to restore your wallet? Here is a guide how to do this:

https://support.exodus.io/article/87-can-i-import-a-private-key

Otherwise if you really renamed the file and changed its extension you are lost I think. You would have to search your hard drive for files which are in the file size range (search by file size) of an ordinary wallet and check those files manually

[Btcspot]

 I would try renaming some of files to Bitcoin core or .dat and if you find your private key which starts with 5 or K then download a wallet from site electrum.org to import your key .

[HCP]

A search with grep mkey or ckey give sooooo much files .... can you give me more advice?

Not sure what other strings you might be able to use. You might be able to try searching for the private key byte sequence: "30 81 d3 02 01 01 04 20"

Wasn't exactly sure how to do that, but found this command which *should* list files that match the byte sequence:

Code:

find . -type f -exec fgrep -aqs $'\x30\x81\xd3\x02\x01\x01\x04\x20' '{}' \; -print

Not sure if it'll work on MacOSX, I've only tested it on Ubuntu Linux... so, maybe try testing against a known good wallet.dat file first