SSD Recovery

[adizzle888]

hello all

my old account has been locked and told to email some recovery email to get it opened again, so i just made a new one to post a quick question.

back in 2014 i was a noob and had some bitcoins on a windows OS on a samsung 840 evo 120gb SSD, i let a friend play around it and they deleted the partition that had my wallet file and installed ubuntu on top of it, i see alot of conflicting information regarding the possibility of recovering my wallet.dat file some say if the SSD has TRIM i wont be able to recover data, others say i have a small chance

the SSD in question was probably turned on a handful of times 5 years ago but not really used at all since, so:

1. Is it t all possible to recover my wallet file if i send it to professionals?

2. do i actually tell the professionals im looking to recover a wallet file?(something tells me to be wary, and if i should how do i word it?)

Thank you!!!

[1715192965]

1715192965

[1715192965]

1715192965

[1715192965]

1715192965

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Generally once any hard drive be it a spinner or ssd has been reformated - and installing a different OS will do that - it is near impossible for a casual user to recover information. The drive not having been used much certainly helps but it will take someone skilled in data recovery and having the right tools to see/recover what is on the drive.

Definitely tell the pros what you are looking for! Unless you live in a country where crypto coins are illegal there is no reason not to tell them and having a specific target to look for is a great help.

One the best data recovery companies on the planet is Ontrack who have been in operation since 1987.

[adizzle888]

Thank you so much for your reply!

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Hmm, poking around OnTrack's site I see that they have fairly inexpensive software solutions that may help you Not sure if the free version (for up to 1gb filesize) would do it but they have a Pro version for $109/year that they advertise as also recovering from reformatted drives like yours.

[adizzle888]

Yes i see on their site, only downside is they are located in the EU and im in the states so i found one close to home.

[NotATether]

2. do i actually tell the professionals im looking to recover a wallet file?(something tells me to be wary, and if i should how do i word it?)

Are you talking about a Bitcoin Core, or Electrum wallet file?

If that is the only thing of value that is on that SSD then tell them. The structure of both types of wallet files is well known, since bitcoin core's is just a Berkley DB, Electrum's is sqlite3. Both of them have specific tables that uniquely identify them from other kinds of database files. So you should also tell them which kind it is (e.g. a Bitcoin Core wallet file, or Electrum wallet file) as they're probably able to find this specific technical information themselves.

If you set a password on that wallet file then you don't have to worry about a rouge taking your private keys, as those parts of the database are encrypted.

[NeuroticFish]

Are you talking about a Bitcoin Core, or Electrum wallet file?

I don't know if Electrum was around in 2014, but even if it was, it was certainly not popular yet (the website shows only the releases from 1.8 up, from Oct 2015).
The popular SPV wallet back in 2014 was Multibit; I was also using it.
However, OP was telling about wallet.dat; if he knows what he's saying then the answer is Bitcoin Core.

1. Is it t all possible to recover my wallet file if i send it to professionals?

Now to the topic. I am not a specialist, but I think that somebody said at some point that recovering from SSD is basically impossible because of its structure.
However, I don't tell you this to disappoint you. I am telling you as an advice to wait for more answers before doing any step further.

[Pmalek]

You are definitely right about the difficulty in recovering data from a hard drive with SSD TRIM enabled. Question is, is it/was it enabled in your particular case as well? From what I was able to find, it's not enabled on all drives.

The positive thing is that the drive hasn't been used that often. The negative thing is that it was formatted and a new OS was installed on it. There is still a chance that the data be recovered. I think it will depend on whether SSD TRIM was initially enabled or not.

Here is a guide that suggest what to do in case SSD TRIM is not enabled on your disk.
https://7datarecovery.com/blog/ssd-data-recovery/

I don't know how good or safe that particular software is, so better wait for other members to chip in. The guide also mentions to seek help from professionals if you are certain your drive had SSD TRIM enabled and you don't manage to recover anything with the software.

[Jet Cash]

Anything you do to the drive could make it impossible to recover anything, so you need to experiment on another drive before hunting for your wallet. I would set up a new wallet with a bit of the blockchain on an old SSD, and overwrite it with Ubuntu. You can then use this to experiment with the various recovery programmes. It looks as if some of them will list recoverable records, but you will need to find out which is the best - hence the use of an experimental drive.

[cr1776]

hello all

my old account has been locked and told to email some recovery email to get it opened again, so i just made a new one to post a quick question.

back in 2014 i was a noob and had some bitcoins on a windows OS on a samsung 840 evo 120gb SSD, i let a friend play around it and they deleted the partition that had my wallet file and installed ubuntu on top of it, i see alot of conflicting information regarding the possibility of recovering my wallet.dat file some say if the SSD has TRIM i wont be able to recover data, others say i have a small chance

the SSD in question was probably turned on a handful of times 5 years ago but not really used at all since, so:

1. Is it t all possible to recover my wallet file if i send it to professionals?

2. do i actually tell the professionals im looking to recover a wallet file?(something tells me to be wary, and if i should how do i word it?)

Thank you!!!

The bolded part is key.  Whatever you do, don't turn it on again.  Likewise, was "turned on a handful of times" and left on for weeks at a time or minutes at a time?  Likewise, if 10GB was installed it is a lot different than if 100GB was installed.

So there is a chance, as far as telling them, if you trust them, yes.  If they are just going to "recover everything on there" they might see the file names too depending of course on what has been over written and not.