attempting to recover old BTC

[megamarclar]

I was laying in bed last night and remembered... "oh crap, I had a miner running on my PC back in 2013, wonder if there are any coins stashed on my computer"
Did a quick search of my archive hard drive and came across a word file named 'bitcoin' that contains a phrase, 34 characters long, starts with '15eax'

I have been searching the internet and these forums to dry and decipher what this code is, and how to import it. Forgive my lack of knowledge in this field, I have a 5yo and have not been on my computer in far too long, the industry has surpassed my current knowledge level.   Thanks for any info.

[djhomeschool]

I was laying in bed last night and remembered... "oh crap, I had a miner running on my PC back in 2013, wonder if there are any coins stashed on my computer"
Did a quick search of my archive hard drive and came across a word file named 'bitcoin' that contains a phrase, 34 characters long, starts with '15eax'

I have been searching the internet and these forums to dry and decipher what this code is, and how to import it. Forgive my lack of knowledge in this field, I have a 5yo and have not been on my computer in far too long, the industry has surpassed my current knowledge level.   Thanks for any info.

This is your bitcoin address.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address

You can use it to see if there are any bitcoins on that address in any blockchain explorer but you can not recover your bitcoins with it.
You can share your bitcoin address to anybody to receive a bitcoin payment, this is your public address.

To recover your bitcoins you need your private key.

Most private keys start with "L" or "K" (52 characters) or "5" (51 characters).

[megamarclar]

ok, so it is basically a 'wallet address' and is basically useless with out the key?

[djhomeschool]

ok, so it is basically a 'wallet address' and is basically useless with out the key?

Correct.

Check your harddrive for any files called "wallet.dat".
Most of the time there will be a folder in your drive at C:\Users\(your pc username)\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin

Check if you have a folder like that.

Do you remember what miner you had running? Do you remember if you had Bitcoin core running?

[LoyceV]

a word file named 'bitcoin' that contains a phrase, 34 characters long, starts with '15eax'

If you enter your Bitcoin address in the Search field on https://blockchain.info/, you'll know if there's anything in it.

[megamarclar]

ok, so it is basically a 'wallet address' and is basically useless with out the key?

Correct.

Check your harddrive for any files called "wallet.dat".
Most of the time there will be a folder in your drive at C:\Users\(your pc username)\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin

Check if you have a folder like that.

Do you remember what miner you had running? Do you remember if you had Bitcoin core running?

thanks for the info fellas,

i do not recall the miner software. that was many many moons ago.....

the actual c: drive has been formatted many times since then, and the folder ( appdata) was a copy that contained 'libraries' which is a copy of all my saved game folders. its amazing that it even survived this far. i will do another search tonight on all the hard disks. Im like a digital hoarder, i save everything. I still have the original napster.exe installer.

[djhomeschool]

ok, so it is basically a 'wallet address' and is basically useless with out the key?

Correct.

Check your harddrive for any files called "wallet.dat".
Most of the time there will be a folder in your drive at C:\Users\(your pc username)\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin

Check if you have a folder like that.

Do you remember what miner you had running? Do you remember if you had Bitcoin core running?

thanks for the info fellas,

i do not recall the miner software. that was many many moons ago.....

the actual c: drive has been formatted many times since then, and the folder ( appdata) was a copy that contained 'libraries' which is a copy of all my saved game folders. its amazing that it even survived this far. i will do another search tonight on all the hard disks. Im like a digital hoarder, i save everything. I still have the original napster.exe installer.

  Oldschool style

[LFC_Bitcoin]

OP, do not show anybody your private key, do not send your wallet.dat to anybody. I’m guessing you will be getting private messages from low ranked accounts now saying they can help you. Do not respond.

Let us know here if you are able to locate the private key & we’ll tell you what to do with it.

[megamarclar]

thanks fellas, ill keep you posted.

[keychainX]

I was laying in bed last night and remembered... "oh crap, I had a miner running on my PC back in 2013, wonder if there are any coins stashed on my computer"
Did a quick search of my archive hard drive and came across a word file named 'bitcoin' that contains a phrase, 34 characters long, starts with '15eax'

I have been searching the internet and these forums to dry and decipher what this code is, and how to import it. Forgive my lack of knowledge in this field, I have a 5yo and have not been on my computer in far too long, the industry has surpassed my current knowledge level.   Thanks for any info.

Even if you formatted the drive 10 times, its possible to recover data. You just need to hire a pro.

If you mined in the early days and were lucky to get a block, then you probably have 50 or 25 BTC in the wallet.dat file.

If you know you still have the drive, then stop using it and get a service to recover it for you

/KX

[posi]

OP, do not show anybody your private key, do not send your wallet.dat to anybody. I’m guessing you will be getting private messages from low ranked accounts now saying they can help you. Do not respond.

Let us know here if you are able to locate the private key & we’ll tell you what to do with it.

I supported what LFC told you and you should ignore any PM send to you about recovery the wallet information either.
Meanwhile, the 34 characters long starts with '15eax' as you said is your address of the wallet contain your BTC and I will advice you to get the full address first and search on https://blockchain.info/ as LoyceV told you so you wont stress yourself since nothing guarantee that you have some coin inside the wallet.

[nc50lc]

If you mined in the early days and were lucky to get a block, then you probably have 50 or 25 BTC in the wallet.dat file.

2013's block reward is 25BTC actually.

But I highly doubt that he'd solo mined at that time, CPUs or even GPUs are getting behind FPGAs and the first generation of ASICs at that time.
It could be no-account pool mining that rewards their share to the specified worker address or a pool with account feature and his bitcoins is in that pool all along.

@megamarclar Does your "15eax" address have a balance when you pasted it in a blockexplorer?
Also, if you happened to do solo mining, there's a slightly long orphaned chain at that time and hopefully, your node (v0.8.0) isn't one of those that's relaying that chain and got rewarded from any of those blocks.

[bartekjagoda]

Before you start attempt to look and recover any data, you should make raw copy of your drive/partition. You also can perform recovery attempt from the raw copy, rather than the drive/partition itself.

Just in case you found note with combination of alphabet and numbers, you could check https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/List_of_address_prefixes what hint, information or data you found.

Even if you formatted the drive 10 times, its possible to recover data. You just need to hire a pro.

That depends on how the drive formatted. Normally your statement is correct, but not when full format performed, where few tool/software write zeros to whole drive before write the file system (NTFS, etx4, etc.)

He is right, there are tools where you can read the drive with a magnetic device, so even a full format and 5 formats, still the data can be read with special hardware

/Bartek

[nc50lc]

-snip-

He is right, there are tools where you can read the drive with a magnetic device, so even a full format and 5 formats, still the data can be read with special hardware

/Bartek

Those tools are useless for hard drives with its "Master Boot Record" all zeroed, ETFbitcoin described his term "full format" like "Zero Fill", so he really meant zero fill.
It's also known as "Low level formatting".

[malevolent]

How if i lose the private key?

You can't spend coins associated with an address if you don't have the corresponding private key. You could look around if you haven't got a wallet file anywhere, or a recovery/seed/backup/mnemonic phrase to a deterministic wallet.

[bartekjagoda]

-snip-

He is right, there are tools where you can read the drive with a magnetic device, so even a full format and 5 formats, still the data can be read with special hardware

/Bartek

Those tools are useless for hard drives with its "Master Boot Record" all zeroed, ETFbitcoin described his term "full format" like "Zero Fill", so he really meant zero fill.
It's also known as "Low level formatting".

Well, good luck then, you can format your drive 5 times, its still possible to extract info.

You can turn off your computer, I can still recover data from your RAM, yes RAM.

Please read some more on the topic before you spam with nonsense
Bartek

[malevolent]

Well, good luck then, you can format your drive 5 times, its still possible to extract info.

You can turn off your computer, I can still recover data from your RAM, yes RAM.

Please read some more on the topic before you spam with nonsense
Bartek

If the drive's blocks with relevant data have been overwritten, good luck recovering the data

Cold boot attacks on DRAMs are also getting harder with every new generation of CPUs (memory controllers).

[keychainX]

-snip-

He is right, there are tools where you can read the drive with a magnetic device, so even a full format and 5 formats, still the data can be read with special hardware

/Bartek

Those tools are useless for hard drives with its "Master Boot Record" all zeroed, ETFbitcoin described his term "full format" like "Zero Fill", so he really meant zero fill.
It's also known as "Low level formatting".

Well, good luck then, you can format your drive 5 times, its still possible to extract info.

You can turn off your computer, I can still recover data from your RAM, yes RAM.

Please read some more on the topic before you spam with nonsense
Bartek

first of all the guy should make some research if the address is empty before making any fuzz.

check your address on blockchain.com or import a view only to see balance.

/KX

[btcdevil]

-snip-

He is right, there are tools where you can read the drive with a magnetic device, so even a full format and 5 formats, still the data can be read with special hardware

/Bartek

Those tools are useless for hard drives with its "Master Boot Record" all zeroed, ETFbitcoin described his term "full format" like "Zero Fill", so he really meant zero fill.
It's also known as "Low level formatting".

Well, good luck then, you can format your drive 5 times, its still possible to extract info.

You can turn off your computer, I can still recover data from your RAM, yes RAM.

Please read some more on the topic before you spam with nonsense
Bartek

first of all the guy should make some research if the address is empty before making any fuzz.

check your address on blockchain.com or import a view only to see balance.

/KX

What you said is correct if the address is empty then what ever the suggestion given above are useless to work on. So first check the address whether it got some coins or not to work on it.