Deleting Electrum wallet

[LTRippley]

HI, I use my Electrum wallet app on my Windows PC. I recently deleted an Electrum wallet file (not the app itself). I expected to find the wallet file in the Recycle bin but it wasn't in there. (Normally all Windows files which get deleted go to the Recycle Bin.) Does anyone know why the wallet file didn't go into the Recycle bin? Where did the deleted file go, if not in the Recycle Bin?

[jackg]

Is your disk quite full? Sometimes you'll get an option to permenantly delete files as instead of putting it in the recycle bin if your disk is too full.

(sometimes, and it might be worth looking for, your disks can each get a recycle bin so it could just be on a different drive on the same computer - if it was deleted on that drive or the other drive was quite full).

[nc50lc]

Are you using the portable version?
If so and if you're using a flash drive (USB stick), it's permanently deleted because deleted files from flash drives wont be saved to recycle bin.
In that case, do not use the flash drive at the moment since you may be able to restore it using various file restoration tools.

[pooya87]

If you use shift+deleted instead of delete the file is going to be permanently deleted too.
You can always recover your wallet using your seed phrase which you should have written down when you created the wallet as Electrum forces you to do in one of the wallet creation steps.

[o_e_l_e_o]

If you don't have your seed phrase, or any other way of recovering this wallet, then I suggest you stop using your computer immediately until you clone the entire hard drive to another disk. There is a chance you could use some recovery tools to recover the delete file, but only if your computer doesn't write over those sectors of your hard drive in the meantime, and the more things you do on your computer then the more chance of this happening.

[PawGo]

HI, I use my Electrum wallet app on my Windows PC. I recently deleted an Electrum wallet file (not the app itself). I expected to find the wallet file in the Recycle bin but it wasn't in there. (Normally all Windows files which get deleted go to the Recycle Bin.) Does anyone know why the wallet file didn't go into the Recycle bin? Where did the deleted file go, if not in the Recycle Bin?

Main question - did you delete it outside of the program or did you use Electrum File->Delete?
Electrum deletes file instantly (no Recycle Bin), your only option would be to use 3rd party Recovery services (application or give hdd to service).
First at all, shut down computer and unplug disk.

[dkbit98]

Does anyone know why the wallet file didn't go into the Recycle bin? Where did the deleted file go, if not in the Recycle Bin?

Files didn't go anywhere and if you didn't write any new data to your drive after you deleted it, than you can probably recover anything you deleted in windows os.
There is no need to worry about this if you have seed words or private keys stored in safe place like you should, so you can always recover your wallet.

[ABCbits]

Where did the deleted file go, if not in the Recycle Bin?

Under the hood, the file is only marked as deleted. It's still exist on your disk until it's overwritten by another file or use software to wipe your drive securely. You could try recovering your wallet file using software such as Recuva or PhotoRec.

Is your disk quite full? Sometimes you'll get an option to permenantly delete files as instead of putting it in the recycle bin if your disk is too full.

Recycle Bin on Windows doesn't use whole disk by default. AFAIK the default is 5% of your partition size.

[LTRippley]

HI, I use my Electrum wallet app on my Windows PC. I recently deleted an Electrum wallet file (not the app itself). I expected to find the wallet file in the Recycle bin but it wasn't in there. (Normally all Windows files which get deleted go to the Recycle Bin.) Does anyone know why the wallet file didn't go into the Recycle bin? Where did the deleted file go, if not in the Recycle Bin?

Main question - did you delete it outside of the program or did you use Electrum File->Delete?
Electrum deletes file instantly (no Recycle Bin), your only option would be to use 3rd party Recovery services (application or give hdd to service).
First at all, shut down computer and unplug disk.

Thanks for your replies. I wasn't interested in retrieving the wallet file. I just wanted to make sure it was permanently deleted. (For sensitive files, I usually go to the Recycle Bin and delete it again to make sure it's gone forever.) But in answer to @PawGo, yes, I did use Electrum file->delete. This could explain why the file got deleted instantly without going to Recycle Bin.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Thanks for your replies. I wasn't interested in retrieving the wallet file. I just wanted to make sure it was permanently deleted.

But why? There is no reason to delete a wallet. What if you accidentally receive coins to one of its addresses in the future and you have no way of accessing them? In the words of Satoshi:

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

(For sensitive files, I usually go to the Recycle Bin and delete it again to make sure it's gone forever.)

As has been explained above, data is only truly deleted if the sectors of the hard drive it is stored on are overwritten. Deleting a file only deletes the small bit of code which tells your OS where to access the data, and essentially says "these sectors can now be used for something else". But until you actually use those sectors for something else, then the data still exists. Simply emptying your recycle bin is not sufficient for truly sensitive data.

[LTRippley]

Thanks for your replies. I wasn't interested in retrieving the wallet file. I just wanted to make sure it was permanently deleted.

But why? There is no reason to delete a wallet. What if you accidentally receive coins to one of its addresses in the future and you have no way of accessing them?

As mentioned above, I used the Electrum wallet app on my desktop PC. I accumulated some BTC in that wallet app and decided that, going forward, I would use a hardware wallet instead. (I simply used the recovery seed to restore that wallet on my hardware device.) I had heard that a hot wallet could be hacked so I decided to delete that wallet file. Aren't hot wallets more susceptible to hacking? Correct me if I'm wrong.

[DireWolfM14]

As mentioned above, I used the Electrum wallet app on my desktop PC. I accumulated some BTC in that wallet app and decided that, going forward, I would use a hardware wallet instead. (I simply used the recovery seed to restore that wallet on my hardware device.) I had heard that a hot wallet could be hacked so I decided to delete that wallet file. Aren't hot wallets more susceptible to hacking? Correct me if I'm wrong.

That's not a very safe way to get a hardware wallet seed.  If I were you I would use the hardware wallet to create a completely new seed phrase that's never been on a PC, and send the bitcoin to that new wallet.  The very point of having a hardware wallet is having a safe backup that's never been in a position to have possibly been compromised.  Only then can you have complete confidence that your coins are safe.

The other thing that strikes me as odd, you had an Electrum seed and restored it using a hardware wallet?  It's my understanding that Electrum seeds are not compatible with hardware wallets, which use Bib39 seed phrases.  Did you confirm your coins are accessible with the hardware wallet?

As for the other issue of safely deleting files, I use BleachBit.  It's free and open-source.  It overwrites the sectors with random noise, so there's no way for them to be restored.  A combination of file encryption and file-shredding tools is a good way to keep the data and keep it safe.

[NotATether]

As mentioned above, I used the Electrum wallet app on my desktop PC. I accumulated some BTC in that wallet app and decided that, going forward, I would use a hardware wallet instead. (I simply used the recovery seed to restore that wallet on my hardware device.) I had heard that a hot wallet could be hacked so I decided to delete that wallet file. Aren't hot wallets more susceptible to hacking? Correct me if I'm wrong.

It is true that a hot wallet is more susceptible to hacking. For example, Electrum servers themselves were compromised a few years ago  to show a fake update message to a copy which, if downloaded, swipes your entire balance after you enter the password.

At least there's no need to worry about file recovery. You had everyone here in a frenzy.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Yeah, DireWolf is right. Importing an insecure hot wallet in to a hardware device does not make it suddenly secure. You can never be more secure than the weakest link in your chain, and for you that is the fact that your seed phrase was generated and stored insecurely prior to being imported in to your hardware wallet. It would be like downloading a document from your email, encrypting it, and then storing that encrypted file on a USB drive locked in a safe. Sure, the encrypted file might be very safe, but the data contained within still exists on your email account and so isn't secure at all.

You need to use your hardware wallet to create a brand new wallet with a brand new seed phrase (which you keep permanently offline and never enter in to any computer, phone, website, etc.), and then send all your coins from your old wallet to this new wallet via a standard bitcoin transaction.

[LTRippley]

Thanks all for your feedback. Learned something new today. This is a great community. 

[BitMaxz]

shredding tool is enough to permanently delete and destroy the file and no one can able to recover them.
But if it's already deleted without using any tools to permanently delete it you can use Ccleaner there is two option you can use with Ccleaner if you want to completely wipe the whole hard drive or only the free spaces. If you don't want to delete all your PC system files or the OS and other files and you only want to permanently erase your old deleted files then only select free spaces under the drive wiper. Free Ccleaner has this option without buying its full version and it also has a shredder tool.