Have an old laptop I purchased used in 2011

[LongTimeAgo]

I have an old gaming laptop that I purchased used in early 2011. I reformatted the hard drive at least once with windows, used it for maybe a year, and its been dormant since 2012.  The chances are slim to none, however, before I chuck the laptop I thought it would be a good idea to at least see if there may have been a bitcoin wallet on the hard drive. Is there any easy way of doing this? Or totally pointless.

[1714667738]

1714667738

[1714667738]

1714667738

[1714667738]

1714667738

[1714667738]

1714667738

[1714667738]

1714667738

[1714667738]

1714667738

[Kakmakr]

Did you buy this notebook from someone else or did you buy it brand new for yourself? This is important, because if you bought it second hand from someone else, the possibility might be that the person you bought it from might have been into Bitcoin at the time, so it will not be time wasted to check.

If you bought it brand new, you yourself will know if you used it for Bitcoin or not....right? (You can search for the default "wallet.dat" file like this guy did... https://fabian-kostadinov.github.io/2021/01/07/how-i-found-and-cashed-in-a-bitcoin-wallet-from-2011/

Good luck... hope you find something. 

[ranochigo]

It doesn't hurt to try to run something like Recuva to see if there are any files that aren't fully overwritten. I would probably prefer it to be mounted externally so nothing gets written on it any further. I have doubts that you'll get anything. Chances are it'll be overwritten if it has been formatted and used.

Pywallet will work as well.

[Findingnemo]

I will say its a waste of time, because you didn't store any bitcoins in that laptop right? even if you did still the chances of recovering the wallet.file is less to none since you formatted it and used it for one years? Which is enough time to rewrite on all the space of your hard drive for sure by considering the year.

[Lorence.xD]

It doesn't hurt to try to run something like Recuva to see if there are any files that aren't fully overwritten. I would probably prefer it to be mounted externally so nothing gets written on it any further. I have doubts that you'll get anything. Chances are it'll be overwritten if it has been formatted and used.

Recuva is a lifesaver and I agree, nothing wrong with checking it out because you never know. My question to OP is are you sure that you are going to find out any bitcoin there? Is the previous owner has some business doing bitcoin?

[LongTimeAgo]

Did you buy this notebook from someone else or did you buy it brand new for yourself? This is important, because if you bought it second hand from someone else, the possibility might be that the person you bought it from might have been into Bitcoin at the time, so it will not be time wasted to check.

If you bought it brand new, you yourself will know if you used it for Bitcoin or not....right? (You can search for the default "wallet.dat" file like this guy did... https://fabian-kostadinov.github.io/2021/01/07/how-i-found-and-cashed-in-a-bitcoin-wallet-from-2011/

Good luck... hope you find something.  

I bought it used on craigslist in March 2011 from a gamer young adult male in his mid 20s. I figured the profile might fit as somebody who could possibly have been into btc. I know its an ULTRA long shot, but i figured might as well. I have the technical knowhow to remove the hard drive from the laptop and plug it into my PC. But from there I'm not sure what software I would need to search the drive. I'm proficient in windows only. Sounds like Recuva is all I need?

[NeuroticFish]

I bought it used on craigslist from a gamer young adult male in his mid 20s. I figured the profile might fit as somebody who could possibly have been into btc. I know its an ULTRA long shot, but i figured might as well. I have the technical knowhow to remove the hard drive from the laptop and plug it into my PC. But from there I'm not sure what software I would need to search the drive. I'm proficient in windows only. Sounds like Recuva is all I need?

Quite a few conditions have to be met:

* the guy should have been indeed bitcoiner
* the guy should have been keeping (holding) those coins and not be concerned enough about his coins' security
* the guy should have been honest about the state of the HDD
* obviously, nothing else has overwritten the useful wallet data

And even if you are "lucky" and find anything valuable, you should probably try to contact the guy since else you'll knowingly steal and, sooner or later, you may feel guilty if you go on that path.

[LongTimeAgo]

I will say its a waste of time, because you didn't store any bitcoins in that laptop right? even if you did still the chances of recovering the wallet.file is less to none since you formatted it and used it for one years? Which is enough time to rewrite on all the space of your hard drive for sure by considering the year.

Both disk formatting and repartition don't remove the data and there is still a good chance to restore file/s even after the year of the disk usage. Stellar Data Recovery did this for me when I lost the file after restoring OS via its backup image. During the restore the old partitions were deleted while the  new ones were formatted. So it is always good to try, ^{read my story} if interested.

Thanks I'll look into stellar data recovery as well

[electronicash]

It doesn't hurt to try to run something like Recuva to see if there are any files that aren't fully overwritten. I would probably prefer it to be mounted externally so nothing gets written on it any further. I have doubts that you'll get anything. Chances are it'll be overwritten if it has been formatted and used.

Pywallet will work as well.

i once had tried using Recuva a long time ago, it could have changed now but as far as i know, it will replace the name of the recovered files making it difficult to see which could be bitcoin-related files.  its better to just check the background of the person whom you have bought the laptop instead before doing it else it would just be a complete waste.

[crwth]

It's pretty interesting to have that if you manage to, but if you know who you bought it from and he seems not to be a crypto enthusiast, then very slim chances here. I think the opportunities like this are like zero.

Imagine having a computer back in 2009, and you are a computer enthusiast, and you know you spend a lot of time on it browsing, and whatever, and you haven't even heard of Bitcoin. And now you think you can recover something on that laptop/desktop because it's on the birth of crypto, and even if you know that you don't know it yet back then, but you are hoping.

I think it's like that, and that's my view on your case.

[UserU]

i once had tried using Recuva a long time ago, it could have changed now but as far as i know, it will replace the name of the recovered files making it difficult to see which could be bitcoin-related files.  its better to just check the background of the person whom you have bought the laptop instead before doing it else it would just be a complete waste.

The longer OP uses the device after formatting, it becomes nigh impossible to recover the copy, let along a working one.

And as he mentioned that it was a year, chances are that thing has been replaced or became beyond irrecoverable.

[joniboini]

i once had tried using Recuva a long time ago, it could have changed now but as far as i know, it will replace the name of the recovered files making it difficult to see which could be bitcoin-related files.  its better to just check the background of the person whom you have bought the laptop instead before doing it else it would just be a complete waste.

I'm quite familiar with Recuva as well, as far as I can remember the renaming is a custom and you can easily rename it to something like wallet.dat. But if OP did found a wallet file, doesn't that means it belongs to the previous owner even if you buy the laptop? There might be a chance that he already recovers it too.

Anyway, since Windows 10 introduce something like secure write, even a simple delete makes the file impossible to recover with Recuva today. I also believe that the chance of finding any crypto is close to zero considering the story.

[Trinx01]

Don't expect too much if you don't store bitcoin on it that time, but if you think that you have bought some bitcoin that time then there would be a high possibility that there is a bitcoin stored that time. If you have bought it for other people or second hand then you are lucky if the first owner of that laptop has bought the bitcoin year 2011. Good luck with that thing hoping that you could get some bitcoin.

[DdmrDdmr]

The other reading here is that, if anyone is going to put their device up for sale, make sure to use a proper tool to erase data beyond being recoverable first (that is, if you have anything sensitive).

There is software around that uses industry standards (i.e. https://www.blancco.com/blog-comprehensive-list-data-wiping-erasure-standards/) for permanent data erasure, allowing you to target specific files, folders or the entire disk. Some are free, some come at a cost, but it’s something to ponder knowing that recovery tools sometimes manage to get their job done.

[hilariousetc]

I have an old gaming laptop that I purchased used in early 2011. I reformatted the hard drive at least once with windows, used it for maybe a year, and its been dormant since 2012.  The chances are slim to none, however, before I chuck the laptop I thought it would be a good idea to at least see if there may have been a bitcoin wallet on the hard drive. Is there any easy way of doing this? Or totally pointless.

This is silly. It's almost certainly pointless and futile. This is akin to buying a random plot of land and spending a lot of time and effort digging it all up in the hope that you might find some long-lost buried treasure. If you like the phantasy idea of searching for buried treasure that probably isn't going to be there then go ahead but we all know this is going to be a waste of time. Lets say in some bizarre circumstance you do actually manage to restore the drive to it's previous state, the chances of a bitcoin wallet being there are slim to none. And even if you found one then what if you can't crack the password, which you won't be able to if it's a very strong one. And then maybe you do manage to crack the password... What's to say the coins haven't already been spent or there was never any money on there in the first place.

[Findingnemo]

I will say its a waste of time, because you didn't store any bitcoins in that laptop right? even if you did still the chances of recovering the wallet.file is less to none since you formatted it and used it for one years? Which is enough time to rewrite on all the space of your hard drive for sure by considering the year.

Both disk formatting and repartition don't remove the data and there is still a good chance to restore file/s even after the year of the disk usage. Stellar Data Recovery did this for me when I lost the file after restoring OS via its backup image. During the restoration the old partitions were deleted while the  new ones were formatted. So it is always good to try, ^{read my story} if interested.

I read your story and in that you recovered the file immediately after the formatting which means chances of rewriting on the existing data is very less but here OP used the HDD for more than a year so keep maybe continuously install files, deleted files, fragmented it which will delete the old data for sure.But there is nothing wrong with trying when it doesn't cost much time and money.