I need Help finding or recovering bitcoins off an old hard drive

[SheriffBass]

Hello there,

   I have a dilemma! I remember buying Bitcoin at its infancy 2009/2010 however remember deleting the wallet and all related programs as the PC was running so slow and was crashing!!
got a new PC then and left the old (now none bootable) one untouched till recently when I downloaded some Deleted file recovery software to try to find the wallet or any sign of it!!

I am very primitive when it comes to computers do not know coding, Python or any other PC language just a simple Windows operator!

 Any bitcoin/blockchain specific identifying file, cookies, programs, scripts.... names to plug in to the recovery software search that would hint to existence of bitcoin/ wallet or blockchain on the old hard drives?
any Windows software that I can download/ buy to find/ recover them?
What do you recommend to see if it's worth going to the next step of professional recovery?? 

Thank you all.

[1714106016]

1714106016

[1714106016]

1714106016

[1714106016]

1714106016

[ABCbits]

Before you do anything else, i strongly recommend you to make RAW copy of your drive. There are few tools such as http://www.hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/

The only tools specific to search Bitcoin wallet i know is only https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5071775.msg48037878#msg48037878, but that assuming you never delete your Bitcoin wallet.
If you think you deleted it as well, you should any file recover software to search file with name "wallet" &  "wallet.dat"

[BitMaxz]

Additional to ETFbitcoin you can also try to make a clone disk if you have extra HDD or SSD you can use to make clone of your disk, OS and including files from your HDD.

Check this tutorial from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F2nh35jq58 including the free software.

For recovery, you can use Acronis revive it is one of the latest data recovery as of now but it is not free video you can check this video guide how it works from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtwTsxD_9wU

If you are looking for free tools to recover files you can try Recuva you can check the guide from Britec from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtwTsxD_9wU

[keychainX]

Hello there,

   I have a dilemma! I remember buying Bitcoin at its infancy 2009/2010 however remember deleting the wallet and all related programs as the PC was running so slow and was crashing!!
got a new PC then and left the old (now none bootable) one untouched till recently when I downloaded some Deleted file recovery software to try to find the wallet or any sign of it!!

I am very primitive when it comes to computers do not know coding, Python or any other PC language just a simple Windows operator!

 Any bitcoin/blockchain specific identifying file, cookies, programs, scripts.... names to plug in to the recovery software search that would hint to existence of bitcoin/ wallet or blockchain on the old hard drives?
any Windows software that I can download/ buy to find/ recover them?
What do you recommend to see if it's worth going to the next step of professional recovery?? 

Thank you all.

Hello,

You should boot the computer from.a.USB drive and then run a tool called pywallet, it will go through your drive on sector level and find possible wallet files, encrypted keys or unencrypted keys, even if the files afe deleted.

You just need to install python and required libs.

pywallet could be find on github and its open source.

/KX

[Stedsm]

You should boot the computer from.a.USB drive and then run a tool called pywallet, it will go through your drive on sector level and find possible wallet files, encrypted keys or unencrypted keys, even if the files afe deleted.

You just need to install python and required libs.

pywallet could be find on github and its open source.

/KX

@OP,
If you decide to go through this suggestion, please beware about the risks here if you download it from an unofficial source

Please use GitHub only for this -

https://github.com/pywallet/PyWallet?files=1

Bitcoin wallet importer/exporter by jackjack-jj

pywallet-win-files (probably Windows related files as they're in .bat format by jackjack-jj

Hope this helps you get back your BTC.

[SheriffBass]

Thank you all for the advise, as I mentioned I am very primitive when it comes to computers do not know any coding, Python or any other PC language....
I've been watching u tube videos about node and java..... I think I'm way over my head here!!

will create a github account and try downloading/ running/ copy & past these files, hope I will run into something!

probably will either have to go to school to learn it or seek professional help!!

[SheriffBass]

If I manage to use the Jackkack wallet ...  from GitHub, does it have to be ran from the same hard drive or can I scan multiple drives  connected  with USB?

How much time/ how much expertise would it take to properly run such a program?

Would someone be able to walk me through it or is it too complicated??

[keychainX]

If I manage to use the Jackkack wallet ...  from GitHub, does it have to be ran from the same hard drive or can I scan multiple drives  connected  with USB?

How much time/ how much expertise would it take to properly run such a program?

Would someone be able to walk me through it or is it too complicated??

Hello

you should not install any software or run anything from the drive you try to recover as it overwrites data.

Boot from USB or external drive.

Personally I recommend you create an image of the drive before you start playing around as you might overwrite sensitive data
and have it as a backup.

And yes, you can scan multiple drives, but do them one by one. On average 500gb takes 5 houra to run.

/KX

[bob123]

Personally I recommend you create an image of the drive before you start playing around as you might overwrite sensitive data
and have it as a backup.

Recovery attempts should never be done on the original drive.

From a forensic point of view, one should create 2 images (raw copies) and perform recovery on one of them.
Then after trying out a specific tool, a new raw copy should be created to try further recovery software on it.


One backup should always be kept safe and the original drive should never be touched with recovery software.


These are the basics of forensics.

[SheriffBass]

all hard drives have been sector by sector cloned as a precaution a while ago, (great idea to have a just in case backup for the backup)  I just need to learn how to run the Jack Jack wallet script through all of them:-/ !!!

[keychainX]

all hard drives have been sector by sector cloned as a precaution a while ago, (great idea to have a just in case backup for the backup)  I just need to learn how to run the Jack Jack wallet script through all of them:-/ !!!

Did you manage to run it?

Depending on your os the settings are different.

If you specify os version and drive size (yes, drive size has to be included in the search) I could write out the parameters for you.

A typical drive (non ssd) takes about 5-8 hours for 250 gb

It prints out possible keys.

/KX

[SheriffBass]

Unfortunately not even close, Still trying to learn Python/ coding basics to be able to run the jack jack wallet code,
as I mentioned I'm not a tech guy at all!!

[bob123]

Did you read the instructions on github ?

It says what dependencies you need to install and and the options you can start the script with.

You don't really need to code anything, just install the necessary files and start the script with the correct parameters.

[keychainX]

Unfortunately not even close, Still trying to learn Python/ coding basics to be able to run the jack jack wallet code,
as I mentioned I'm not a tech guy at all!!

What os are you planning to use for the recovery, i can write out a step by step as I've done this recently for a client in New York.

/KX

[SheriffBass]

Did you read the instructions on github ?

It says what dependencies you need to install and the options you can start the script with.

You don't really need to code anything, just install the necessary files and start the script with the correct parameters.

that's my problem my friend!!
I don't know what pip, dependencies, parameters, ......... are, or how they work, or even what they mean!!!
so slowly but surly downloading what I can, but someone told me I will have to rewrite the script to match where I downloaded the programs ( the path has to match) so I will have to redo (uninstall/ reinstall) all what I did so far or go through the script to reidentify the path where I have Python, twisted....

so far I'm at:
unexpected indent, there are packages available in the repositories of:file<stdin>, line1
and syntaxerror: invalid syntax Debian and Ubuntu as python-twisted for python2
again have no clue what that means but still trying.

[SheriffBass]

Unfortunately not even close, Still trying to learn Python/ coding basics to be able to run the jack jack wallet code,
as I mentioned I'm not a tech guy at all!!

What os are you planning to use for the recovery, i can write out a step by step as I've done this recently for a client in New York.

/KX

I'm using windows, but guess just to verify the presence of the wallet I will have to use python to run the Jack Jack wallet script. then the recovery will be a whole different process.

[AitorMarcos]

is it real to recover your btc  it from 2009\2010? 

[bob123]

Were you able to do the following without any errors ?

Windows:
 1. Install Python 2.7
 2. Install Twisted 11.0.0 for Py2.7, then Zope.Interface (a .egg file) for Py2.7: http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/Downloads

According to the 'syntax error', it seems python twisted is not installed yet ?

Could you outline what exactly you have installed already ?

[Pmalek]

is it real to recover your btc  it from 2009\2010? 

If it is possible? Yes. Read the entire thread.
Depending on how much you have used your hard drive since you lost access to your bitcoins you might extract the needed information using the suggestions provided here.

But open a new thread and explain exactly what happened.

[SheriffBass]

Were you able to do the following without any errors ?

Windows:
 1. Install Python 2.7
 2. Install Twisted 11.0.0 for Py2.7, then Zope.Interface (a .egg file) for Py2.7: http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/Downloads

According to the 'syntax error', it seems python twisted is not installed yet ?

Could you outline what exactly you have installed already ?

ooook, so the pip wasn't even installed so twisted was downloaded but not quit installed!
now I downloaded and ran pip
downloaded and ran twisted
in the process of downloading Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7.
I think I'm almost there, 
wish me luck.