Any hope or should I quite trying? 50miner old story.

[Zagal]

Hello everyone.
I'm almost sure that I won't recover the BTC I once mined, but I would appreciate an expert opinion so I can get this matter out of my head.

Here's my story: Around 2010, more or less, I heard about Bitcoin and out of curiosity, I downloaded and used 50miner. I ran it for about a week, day and night, and when I saw that I had a few coins—I don't think more than two or three, and they were worth only a few cents each—I figured it wasn't worth the electricity my computer was using, so I deleted or uninstalled the program and forgot about it. I still have the password I used to log on 50miner to start mining.

When Bitcoin reached its peak, I remembered this. I still had (and still have) that hard drive, but I had formatted it and installed Windows from scratch, and even Ubuntu. Even so, I ran some commercial file recovery programs, and as expected, the wallet.dat file didn't appear, so I gave up and forgot about the whole thing.

A few days ago, I was looking for a file on a recovery disk I have from that time and I saw a disk image file. It reminded me that the PC I used to mine bitcoins on was being cloned in real time to another disk using VMware. I'm fairly certain the cloning started before I installed 50miner and stopped before I formatted the computer.

The files I have are named "disco_duro.vmdk" (hard drive) wolf.vdi (I think this is a virtual box file for an operating system) and another folder named "maquina" (machine) that seems to have files related to the virtual operating system of the vmware virtual machine.

I used diskDrill to search for the wallet.dat file inside this files and it didn't show up, even inside the compressed files it recovered.

Is there any chance to recover this BTC or are they lost forever?

Please, don't answer with just a "no" (I guess is a big no) but accompany it with a brief but clear explanation. Of course, if there any chance to recover the BTC, please explain it.
Thanks in advance.

Z.

[rat03gopoh]

Were you a solo miner or did you join mining pool (esp. their own pool 50btc)?
If you haven't withdrawn BTC from the pool for whatever reason, then the wallet.dat you recovered definitely doesn't contain any BTC; you only see balances in the app's GUI. And the login password is useless in this case, as they are currently defunct.

[Zagal]

I have read that 50miner was a pool miner, mining in 50btc pool, I don't remember to be given the option to do it in other way.

I have not recovered the wallet.dat file either.

The only thing I have is a virtual copy of the drive where all of this happened, but I'm understanding that if I never withdrew the mined BTC in a wallet.dat file this BTC mined are lost forever, aren't they?

Thanks for your answer!!

[Cricktor]

You could still use VMware Workstation and/or Virtualbox to mount your virtual storage file and look in the mounted filesystem if you can find your wallet. If you do find it, you can verify if there are any spendable coins. Then you have peace of mind whatever the outcome is.

That doesn't sound like rocket science, at least to me. YMMV.

With some Google or LLM chatbot search, you should be able to find working tools to inspect such virtual storage containers. Of course it depends on your computer knowledge how feasible it's for you.

[Zagal]

DiskDrill have this option too, virtual disks can be mounted and deleted files can be recovered. A virtual disk can be opened as a compressed file too, and it is possible to search through its files. I did both things, recovered several gigs of files, compressed files either, and searched for the wallet.dat file, but nothing appeared. Even I searched for the word "wallet" inside documents, but it only appeared inside a .jl file, but nothing related to 50miner or similar.

Also searched for 50miner, key, seed and several words related but nothing useful appeared.

I don't remember recovering the wallet.dat file; I didn't know anything about mining at the time (and I don't know much about it now) and since 50btc is closed there is no way to recover it know.

I think my bitcoins are lost like tears in the rain 

Thanks so much for your help!

[MarryWithBTC]

Here's my story: Around 2010, more or less, I heard about Bitcoin and out of curiosity, I downloaded and used 50miner. I ran it for about a week, day and night, and when I saw that I had a few coins—I don't think more than two or three, and they were worth only a few cents each—I figured it wasn't worth the electricity my computer was using, so I deleted or uninstalled the program and forgot about it. I still have the password I used to log on 50miner to start mining.

If you still have the password from 2010, you are a very careful human being, backing up the wallet.dat file wouldn't have been so difficult. Maybe you acted in anger.

A few days ago, I was looking for a file on a recovery disk I have from that time and I saw a disk image file. It reminded me that the PC I used to mine bitcoins on was being cloned in real time to another disk using VMware. I'm fairly certain the cloning started before I installed 50miner and stopped before I formatted the computer.

If the cloning truly stopped before you formatted the system, then the wallet.dat would exist inside the virtual disk image, it might exist as a simple file on your current filesystem, but embedded within that virtual disk’s filesystem structure.

The files I have are named "disco_duro.vmdk" (hard drive) wolf.vdi (I think this is a virtual box file for an operating system) and another folder named "maquina" (machine) that seems to have files related to the virtual operating system of the vmware virtual machine.

I used diskDrill to search for the wallet.dat file inside this files and it didn't show up, even inside the compressed files it recovered.

Is there any chance to recover this BTC or are they lost forever?

if your instinct is firm, you could hire an expert. Mount the .vdi/.vmdk image in a controlled environment and perform a low-level forensic scan of the mounted filesystem, rather than searching the container file directly.

I think my bitcoins are lost like tears in the rain 

Thanks so much for your help!

Giving up again?
Okay, let's wait on quantum computers for help

[rat03gopoh]

Giving up again?
Okay, let's wait on quantum computers for help

He gave up as he made sure to only back up his login password. He might have managed to log in with a VirtualDisk, but it wouldn't be possible to sync his account to the latest state, especially to restore his balance.
It's worth noting that he was mining through the "50btc" mining pool. His Bitcoins weren't stored locally, but by the pool admins. Currently, it's uncertain whether the admin still holds those Bitcoins for future reclaiming or it was spent on their own initiative making it impossible to claim (here's an example :?topic=2717070.0).

[Cricktor]

I had the impression you had some sort of usable backup but it seems I was wrong.

A few days ago, I was looking for a file on a recovery disk I have from that time and I saw a disk image file. It reminded me that the PC I used to mine bitcoins on was being cloned in real time to another disk using VMware. I'm fairly certain the cloning started before I installed 50miner and stopped before I formatted the computer.

This part doesn't quite make a lot of sense to me: cloning a system in real-time with VMware?

I mean I used VMware Workstation a lot to run virtual machines for quite some purposes. Yes, I'm aware this is not the only product that VMware had in its portfolio. Still a bit odd...

Anyway, when you had to use some data recovery tools, it looks like something got corrupted, reasons unknown. Not a great starting point. Take whatever you want from this.