[READ] Trying to recover bitcoin? Read this

[NotATether]

Due to the recent torrent of people asking how to recover lost bitcoins, I present -

How to recover bitcoins from lost or corrupted wallet.dat

Table of Contents

1. Did you buy or download the wallet from the internet?
2. If you have a real wallet.dat file that you created
3. Where is your wallet file located?
4. My wallet file is corrupted. Help!
5. I forgot my wallet password or seed phrase. Help!
6. Recover wallet files from corrupted or formatted disks
7. If all else fails...

So, you have a wallet file you created or maybe you got from somewhere and you're trying to extract private keys from it. Keep reading because this topic will show you how to extract the private keys from real wallets, and steer you clear from bogus wallets that are sold on the darknet with no real private keys and may even be loaded with malware. You won't believe how easy it is to forge a fake wallet!

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1. Did you buy or download the wallet from the internet?

Then I advise you to please stop and read this. almost all wallet files sold online are counterfeits. Wallet.dat files are literally just databases-on-a-file with tables for private keys, metadata and addresses and some other fields. Attempting to recover bitcoin from these is a waste of time because the "encrypted private keys" inside the wallet file may actually be just random numbers passed through an encryption function!

With the current bitcoin price skyrocketing to $41K, so has the number of scams involving wallet.dat files. Please stay safe. People claiming to sell you wallet files may actually send you a compressed (zip) or RAR file that has malicious programs that steal private keys from your wallet software instead. So again, please save your money. It's just not worth it for getting lost bitcoins which nobody has been able to retrieve before in history.

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2. If you have a real wallet.dat file that you created

Then read the excellent guide written by LoyceV: Recover Bitcoin from any old storage format. It describes the format of the private keys you need to extract, the names of the wallet.dat files for different programs, how seed phrases work, and other important concepts you need to know before you start recovering your wallet.

When you finish reading that post, read on.

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3. Where is your wallet file located?

Each wallet software stores their wallet files in a different location. Here are the locations for where wallet software creates wallets by default, and what they name them

Bitcoin Core:

- Wallets are located at C:\Users\<YOUR USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\bitcoin\wallets on Windows, /Users/<YOUR USERNAME>/.bitcoin/wallets on MacOS, and /home/<YOUR USERNAME>/.bitcoin/wallets , Each subfolder in the wallets/folder represents a wallet you have created. In each of these sub folders there is a single wallet.dat file in each of them. The wallet.dat file in the .bitcoin/wallets folder is the wallet for [default wallet].

Electrum:

- Wallets are located at C:\Users\<YOUR USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Electrum\wallets on Windows, /Users/<YOUR USERNAME>/.electrum/wallets on MacOS, and /home/<YOUR USERNAME>/.electrum/wallets on Linux. Your wallets files are all files located in that folder. They have no file extension and if you don't remember giving your wallet a name, look for a file called default_wallet. That is the name of the default wallet in Electrum.

Multibit:

According to https://github.com/Multibit-Legacy/read-multibit-wallet-file:

Locating your wallet file

Mac OS
Version   Wallet file location
Multibit Classic   ~/Library/Application Support/MultiBit/*.wallet
MultibitHD   ~/Library/Application Support/MultiBitHD/<wallet-id>/mbhd.wallet.aes

Windows
Version   Wallet file location
Multibit Classic   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MultiBit\<wallet-name>.wallet
MultibitHD   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MultiBitHD\<wallet-id>\mbhd.wallet.aes

<wallet-id> is a very long, random directory name that acts as a globally unique identifier for a wallet. It is starts with mbhd- followed by a long string of letters, numbers and dashes. You will have one directory like this for each wallet.

<wallet-name> is the name that you gave the wallet when you created it. You will have a ``.wallet file for each wallet.

<username> is your windows user name.

Armory:

Read the github page Bitcoin: Migrate away from Armory Wallet for instructions on how to get the Root Key for your Armory wallet and use it to extract all of your private keys.

Mycelium

Mycelium uses a standard BIP39 seed phrase to create your wallet file, stored internally on your phone or tablet. On Mycelium iOS, go to Settings > Back Up and then write down the seed phrase it displays on the screen. On Mycelium Android click on the top right 3 dots > Backup to access this screen.

Once you have the seed phrase, you can create a new Electrum wallet and import this seed phrase into it.

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4. My wallet file is corrupted. Help!

WARNING: After you recover your bitcoins, move them to a different address. These recovery tools store your private keys in plain-text in various locations on the hard disk or memory, which allows anyone to steal your recovered bitcoins. Disconnect your computer from the internet during recovery if possible.

Also, another important warning is below, thanks to @DaveF for reminding me about this.

NEVER EVER WORK ON THE ORIGINAL FILE. ONLY EVER WORK ON A COPY OF IT.

When recovering the wallet.dat or the default_wallet OR ANY OTHER ACTUAL FILE.
MAKE A BACKUP ON REMOVABLE MEDIA BEFORE DOING ANYTHING.
Don't put it in your Dropbox / google drive / Microsoft one drive. Just keep it local on media you control.
This way if you damage the file for whatever reason, no big deal.
And when you are done, you can destroy the media and know 100% it's gone.

The last thing you want to happen is accidentally destroying your corrupted wallet in the process of recovering it.

Pywallet is the swiss army knife for recovering private keys from corrupted wallets. Install Python, download the GitHub repository, extract it from the zip file if necessary, and then run:

Code:

./pywallet --dumpwallet

If your wallet is encrypted and you remember the passphrase, run:

Code:

./pywallet --dumpwallet --password="Your password"

This will output your private keys to the command-line terminal.

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5. I forgot my wallet password or seed phrase. Help!

This section assumes you have the wallet file. If not, skip to the next section.

First of all, if you have a wallet that supports seed phrases and you only forgot the password, then you can create a new wallet and restore from the seed phrase.

If you forgot the password and the seed phrase, then unfortunately, all bets are off. You need one of these to recover your bitcoins.

If you have only forgotten a word or two of your seed phrase, or you forgot the order of two or three or a similar small number of words, or even if you forgot a few characters of your password, use btcrecover to recover your bitcoins. Go to https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md for instructions for seed phrase recovery, and go to https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/blob/master/TUTORIAL.md#btcrecover-tutorial for instructions on how to recover your password.

FindOuter can brute-force a missing word in a seed phrase or missing characters in a private key. It's useful if you wrote your seed or private key down on paper but it got damaged and you lost a word or a few characters  as a result.

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6. Recover wallet files from corrupted or formatted disks

A fellow forum user shared their experience of recovering bitcoins from their damaged partition, which you can read here: how I rescued my wallet.dat. Please note that the more data you have written to the drive after it was formatted, the less likely this method will succeed.

Again, DO NOT FORGET TO BACK UP YOUR WALLET FILE FIRST!

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7. If all else fails...

...and you have the wallet file and remember part of your password or seed phrase, you can contact Dave of walletrecoveryservices and ask him to help you to recover your password or seed phrase. Dave has been in this business since 2013 and is the only recognized wallet recovery service by the bitcointalk community, and he has a way of recovering your password/seed phrase without you sending him the entire wallet file. This means it's impossible for private keys to be intercepted and stolen.

Self-moderated against spam

Please use this thread for asking details on how to recover your wallet, seeds or private keys or suggestions/critique/corrections/improvement to the OP.

I'd prefer if newbies use this thread for asking about wallet recovery since there are some other wallet software I couldn't find information about.

[NotATether]

Reserved

[DaveF]

Quoting myself from the LoyceV thread that you have posted above.

And adding this:
NEVER EVER WORK ON THE ORIGINAL FILE. ONLY EVER WORK ON A COPY OF IT.
I have helped people recover some wallets over the years and it's been made more difficult because we did not have an untouched file to work with.

When recovering the wallet.dat or the default_wallet OR ANY OTHER ACTUAL FILE.
MAKE A BACKUP ON REMOVABLE MEDIA BEFORE DOING ANYTHING.
Hell make several, just in case.
Let me bold that a bit more:
MAKE A BACKUP ON REMOVABLE MEDIA BEFORE DOING ANYTHING.
Don't put it in your Dropbox / google drive / Microsoft one drive. Just keep it local on media you control.
This way if you damage the file for whatever reason, no big deal.

And when you are done, you can destroy the media and know 100% it's gone.

Make backups on a USB stick / SD card / whatever just don't play with the original file.

-Dave

[NotATether]

~snip

Thanks for reminding me about this, I have added it to the OP.

Storing your wallet file backup in the cloud is actually dangerous because if it gets hacked, someone could steal it and try to recover it themselves, and of course they're not going to return it to you.

The wallet files and their copies should be considered sensitive information and closely guarded until you are able to move all of your bitcoins off of all of the addresses contained inside of it, after which the wallet files are worthless and can be discarded.

[Oshosondy]

This topic is very useful and helpful, it can help in recovering back wallet seed which is the reason I like this topic. Like the
The FinderOuter, a bitcoin recovery tool (v0.6.0 2020-12-24), it has been used before to recover back my friends seed phrase when he was unable to recover one of his missing 12 words due to his paper backup damage.

In addition, we need to also as a bitcoin users to focus on how to backup seed phrase and passwords in a way we will be able to recover it back. We know people can make mistake, even the experts can make mistake but we need to be conscious about how we will recover back our seed phrase in case of cases it got lost or not accessable because there are times our backup will be lost in a way even any requirement by the recovery tool may have also not accessable again and the wallet will be lost forever beyond recovery.

There are many people that lost their seed phrase and not able to recover it back. That is why we should just try as much as possible to make sure we do the proper backup in a way if one is lost, two or more will be available for recovery as replica.

[MrBlue7lvn]

apologies if this has been covered or been requested many times,

I have got my old 2009 windows 7 sony vaoi laptop out, as I recall having some (no idea if I have even a full BTC ) BTC on the bitcoin core desktop system that I downloaded in 2013,

what would be the most efficient way to move that btc from that harddrive? as the laptop is super slow (takes about 5 mins to load the start menu ) and has a limited space of 450 gig on the hard drive, back then the bitcoin core would only take up a handful of gig whereas now it would need at least 350 gigs not sure if I even have enough free space for it to synchronize with the network along with the fact if it will even complete the task of synchronising   

thank you for reading this, I feel like a lost child even tho I use to be here regularly 8 years ago lol

[LoyceV]

I recall having some (no idea if I have even a full BTC ) BTC on the bitcoin core desktop system that I downloaded in 2013,

what would be the most efficient way to move that btc from that harddrive?

Copy wallet.dat:

Bitcoin Core:

- Wallets are located at C:\Users\<YOUR USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\bitcoin\wallets on Windows, /Users/<YOUR USERNAME>/.bitcoin/wallets on MacOS, and /home/<YOUR USERNAME>/.bitcoin/wallets , Each subfolder in the wallets/folder represents a wallet you have created. In each of these sub folders there is a single wallet.dat file in each of them. The wallet.dat file in the .bitcoin/wallets folder is the wallet for [default wallet].

[MrBlue7lvn]

I recall having some (no idea if I have even a full BTC ) BTC on the bitcoin core desktop system that I downloaded in 2013,

what would be the most efficient way to move that btc from that harddrive?

Copy wallet.dat:

Bitcoin Core:

- Wallets are located at C:\Users\<YOUR USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\bitcoin\wallets on Windows, /Users/<YOUR USERNAME>/.bitcoin/wallets on MacOS, and /home/<YOUR USERNAME>/.bitcoin/wallets , Each subfolder in the wallets/folder represents a wallet you have created. In each of these sub folders there is a single wallet.dat file in each of them. The wallet.dat file in the .bitcoin/wallets folder is the wallet for [default wallet].

Once I am able to eventually find this file do I just us e a USB stick and move it to a more stable and update device ? that connects to the bitcoin core network or will I able to add that file to another wallet type

again thank you for responding 

[jackjack]

Once I am able to eventually find this file do I just us e a USB stick and move it to a more stable and update device ? that connects to the bitcoin core network or will I able to add that file to another wallet type

again thank you for responding 

The bitcoin-core wallet format has changed since 2009 so I think the easier is to export the private keys using pywallet and import them into an Electrum wallet
You can also first export only the addresses to create an Electrum read-only wallet and then check the balances to export exclusively the couple of private keys you need
That would be safer as I guess the 2009 wallet isn't encrypted

[MrBlue7lvn]

thanks guys for replying to my posts, really appreciate ur help on this matter, due to being caught up trading cryptos i haven't replied here,

unfortunately, the laptop from 2009 is far too clogged up and slow, I'm unable to even open the documents folder let alone c drive and search/move any files let alone btc core wallet files,

my local repair guy is recommending rather than upgrading the ram and trying to fix up the laptop so its workable it would be easier to move the hard drive and retrieve any files via connecting said hardrive to another device,

this shouldn't comprise right?

[NotATether]

thanks guys for replying to my posts, really appreciate ur help on this matter, due to being caught up trading cryptos i haven't replied here,

unfortunately, the laptop from 2009 is far too clogged up and slow, I'm unable to even open the documents folder let alone c drive and search/move any files let alone btc core wallet files,

my local repair guy is recommending rather than upgrading the ram and trying to fix up the laptop so its workable it would be easier to move the hard drive and retrieve any files via connecting said hardrive to another device,

this shouldn't comprise right?

That is correct.

For future reference, although I don't think you deleted your wallet file, it is far safer to recover a deleted file with the hard drive taken out and put it inside a disk enclosure with a USB port, than to attempt recovery while running the operating system on the same disk as your lost files, because swap memory that's constantly written to the disk can overwrite the area of the disk the file once was in.

Also dual-booting another operating system (on a different disk) or a DVD or USB stick provides equivalent protection for the deleted files.

[MrBlue7lvn]

awesome sauce, lets see how taking the hard drive out helps me locate the wallet file, I'm sure I didn't delete anything, upon further reading I've learnt that I didn't have to try and re-synchronise the node to see how much I have in my wallet lol learning everyday

[MrBlue7lvn]

how do i add an image, I want to add a screenshot of when I downloaded bitcoin core lool it beggars belief I had bitcoin core in 2011 I always thought it was 2013,


also, update now that I have connected my old hard drive to my new laptop via USB, even tho i can't find

 Wallets are located at C:\Users\<YOUR USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\bitcoin\wallets on Windows


I can't even find the folder named AppData

[MrBlue7lvn]

ok guys this is getting bloody tense, have found some files by searching wallet. I've realised before going any further I need back all this up

[NotATether]

how do i add an image, I want to add a screenshot of when I downloaded bitcoin core lool it beggars belief I had bitcoin core in 2011 I always thought it was 2013,

Upload the image on Imgur.com and post the link here.

I can't even find the folder named AppData

It's a hidden folder, you either have to type it in the File Explorer address bar like C:\Users\yourself\AppData or go to the ribbon and find the Tools tab > File and folder options go to the "View" tab and select the "Properties" icon > click Advanced options in the dialog that appears > Show hidden files and folders button in the list that appears.

[MrBlue7lvn]

how do i add an image, I want to add a screenshot of when I downloaded bitcoin core lool it beggars belief I had bitcoin core in 2011 I always thought it was 2013,

Upload the image on Imgur.com and post the link here.

I can't even find the folder named AppData

It's a hidden folder, you either have to type it in the File Explorer address bar like C:\Users\yourself\AppData or go to the ribbon and find the Tools tab > File and folder options > click Advanced options in the dialog that appears > Show hidden files and folders button in the list that appears.

PT1.

So I have made 3 back ups,

I have found the wallet.dat file from 2013  

I have downloaded Python and I have downloaded the  pywallet master file

when I try and run pywallet, it flashes on the screen and disappears,

PT2
having re-read the post after typing up the first part,

I've realised I don't think I need to do step 4 due to my wallet file not being corrupt (hopefully)

I'm going back to step 2 lol

I should extra benefits fro all the extra chromosomes i have

I don

just  note I have zero coding experience  

[MrBlue7lvn]

ok guys this is getting bloody tense, have found some files by searching wallet. I've realised before going any further I need back all this up

Good decision, but avoid cloud backup if you have another medium (such as different computer or USB flash drive).

It's a hidden folder, you either have to type it in the File Explorer address bar like C:\Users\yourself\AppData

You also can type %appdata% which open C:\Users\[your windows username]\AppData

yep backed up on USB stick and a standard external drive

[NotATether]

when I try and run pywallet, it flashes on the screen and disappears,

Can you open Windows Search (press Windows key + S or click on the magnifying glass at the bottom left), type "cmd", and then click on the entry with the console icon that says "Command Prompt" or "cmd"?

This will open a command prompt window where you can use the cd C:/Users/you/Downloads/whereverPywalletIs command to go to the folder of pywallet, and then try to run it again. It should not flash and disappear this time.

[MrBlue7lvn]

thank you for the advice, im just wondering do I need to do this step, as I don't believe my wallet.dat file is corrupted ?

would it not be easier to import said wallet.dat file to a new btc wallet

most youtube videos show as long as I can get my private keys and default address I should be able to import my wallet from 2013

or am I way off the mark

[LoyceV]

thank you for the advice, im just wondering do I need to do this step, as I don't believe my wallet.dat file is corrupted ?

would it not be easier to import said wallet.dat file to a new btc wallet

Pywallet is a last resort to recover from a damaged wallet. If your wallet.dat is not corrupted, you should be able to load it using a fresh installation of Bitcoin Core. And if your last transaction was made in 2013, it shouldn't take too long to synchronize the first few years for your balance to show up. You'll only know for sure after synchronizing completely, or looking up your addresses in a block explorer.

Make sure your computer is clean before doing anything though!