Topic: 2009 Bitcoin Wallet Help & Possible Find : UPDATE - page 2. (Read 393 times)

Hi there,


The file would be a binary format, so not really readable for a human.

That would be challenging due to the binary format as mentioned above.
You might wanna use Bitcoin Core if you find that file. That would be the easiest way to import the wallet.dat. Another method would be pywallet.

As @bitmover already said, that file wouldn't be big. From your statement, it also sounds like you haven't been mining for long. The size of the file depends on the generated addresses and their transactions, so it might not have been too much in your case. On top of that there were a lot of things not implemented in 2009 that could make it a larger file. So it should be in the range of a few kilobytes to a few megabytes?


I'm goin to summarize the question as it relates to both.
There are several software such as EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard or Recuva that could lead to success. However, success is not guaranteed especially since it has been a very long time and the deleted data may have already been overwritten with new ones.

The wallet.dat file size depends on the number of addresses you have generated.

I found this thread asking this question about the file size and the information that 1135 bytes per address was confirmed.



I made your images visible here:

Hello,

Back in the summer of 2009, I downloaded Bitcoin and mined very briefly. At the time I had a cutting edge gaming rig and I came across Bitcoin in a new article.  I remember mining Bitcoin and it brought my gaming rig to a crawl. After brief period of time and with Bitcoin being worthless, I uninstalled Bitcoin. A decade later, Bitcoin explodes and it made me think if I had any Bitcoin.

I was really skeptical. I tried many many times over the years to find the wallet.dat file and no luck. Maybe my memory was bad.

I very recently found the JakeWins, FindBTC, Github program to search hard drives that have seen better days. I get my computer programmer friend involved and we run FindBTC on Debian Linux. In 2009, I was using a WD 36GB Raptor drive made in 2004. At 73% of the way into the scan it hits a possible wallet.dat file trace.

The possible wallet.dat file is seperated into four parts. FindBTC gives byte offset numbers where the file exists. We use sector editor to open each wallet file in linux. In wallet file 3, if gives the install location C:/Users/.../start menu/bitcoin/wallet.dat. Appearing to confirm that Bitcoin was installed.

The problem is many years ago, I deleted the Users file on this hard drive.

Questions/Help:
1. What type of wording or language is contained in wallet.dat file from 2009?
2. Using sector editor to read the file, can I locate the address within the file?
3. How large should wallet.dat file be typically from 2009?
4. Any programs to recover a deleted Users file from Windows 7.
5. Any programs exist to recover deleted wallet.dat file.

Please see attached images.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/038socKcaDgEvzbr2BgW99twg
https://share.icloud.com/photos/04b2VtgMIusQWUPG8WUcBzzxw