The Search for Wallets

[Eaks]

I was an early adapter of BTC mining.  Like many posts on here... I've gained and lost my fair share of BTC's for the last decade and I'm now on the hunt for what I once had.  While I don't have an encrypted HDD that I can't remember my password to, I do have an old blackberry that I can't remember the simple screen lock code lol.. But that's not the point of this post/question!

I've learned my lessons (the hard way... FlowerTech, 50BTC...) and I'm now acting smart on how and where my crypto is stored.  But like many others, the hunt for old wallets is ongoing... it's a fun treasure hunt!

I've read some posts that state that there is software out there that can scan old drives for files that resemble wallets.  I know there's always risk, but is this true? If so, recommendations, insight, feedback?

Thanks!

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[Eaks]

I really wish I did a better job managing/keeping track of my Crypto! haha  I have a lot of HDD's I want to scan through.

I was thinking about using the software mentioned above, but instead of downloading an open sourced piece of software and learning howto run/use it... I was thinking about getting some software that can recover deleted files on old hard drives and try to find either *.dat files (in hopes of wallets) and files named "utc".  I don't think I ever renamed my wallets or hid them.  The wallets are going to be original Bitcoin/litecoin and ethereum core.  This should be just as effective as the other program, right?  What am I missing?.. if anything. Other files I should be looking for?

[NotATether]

I was thinking about using the software mentioned above, but instead of downloading an open sourced piece of software and learning howto run/use it... I was thinking about getting some software that can recover deleted files on old hard drives and try to find either *.dat files (in hopes of wallets) and files named "utc".

I'll make it simple for you. For the above program, you download and install Node.js, then you run inside the command prompt:

Code:

npm install findwallet -g

After that you run it like this:

Code:

findwallet -i <root path you think there are wallet.dat files in> -o output_list_of_files.txt

This will make a file called output_list_of_files.txt in your home folder with the paths to all the wallet.dat files it found.

It will not find deleted wallet files, so if you have any of those, use some recovery software to restore them.

[HCP]

There is also good ol' PyWallet... it has a "recover" option for scanning for deleted wallets etc... it does require some ability with commandline, as it is a Python script with no GUI etc: https://github.com/jackjack-jj/pywallet

It's suitable only for old "Bitcoin Core" (and altcoin clone) wallet applications that use the BerkeleyDB "wallet.dat" file format.

There are also the more generic "data recovery" apps like Recuva, EaseUS etc...

Or you can hex search for various markers used in wallet.dat's... like the ones listed here: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/41447/filesystem-is-corrupt-how-to-find-wallet-dat

If you suspect that files were deleted, you should "clone" the drives/create raw binary images of the drives and work on the images to prevent any further data lose etc.


If you don't think files were deleted, you could just search old drives for .dat files, but that might throw up a lot of "false positives" as numerous applications use .dat as a generic "Data file" extension. You could also search for "bitcoin" or "btc" or "wallet" or "crypto"...

Note that "wallet" and "crypto" might throw up the odd false positive or two as Windows has some files and folders that include "wallet" and/or "crypto" that have no relation to cryptocurrency whatsoever.

[Husires]

this topic have basic information about Recover Bitcoin from any old storage format https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4959742.0
If you are using an old harddisk try to copy files first, avoid writing any file or adding new files, and do not install any program unless you are sure how it works because recovering deleted files will be more difficult.
If the file is not deleted, then Pywallet or Findwallet (not deleted wallet file) is sufficient to find it.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

But like many others, the hunt for old wallets is ongoing... it's a fun treasure hunt!

OP has probably gone away from the forum and has been given good answers to his question anyway, but I just wanted to make a comment on how cool it must be to be in his position of having to do a treasure hunt for any bitcoin that he might have squirreled away when the price was presumably much, much lower.  It'd be good if he came back to this thread and gave an update on whether he found any coins.

And yeah, it's definitely a good thing to keep close track of where your coins are and where the wallet backups/seed phrases/whatever are located.  I'd imagine people are doing a damn good job of that nowadays, but as you can see from OP's story you could potentially lose a lot if you're sloppy with record keeping.