factory reset wiped my files dont have private key?

CryptoPR

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Scam ICO hater

Quote from: papercoins on August 12, 2017, 03:12:20 PM

wanted to give an update as to what I did so that if anyone in future that has this kind of problem can take this route. I made an image of the hard drive and tried many different things which were suggested on this forum none of them worked for me. I sent my hard drive the original into a company called secure data recovery they are located in Ohio I believe. They ran a free diagnostics test on my hard drive and gave me a quote of a little under $2000. I pre authorized the charge via a credit card. They gave me a 5-11 business day window to complete the raw recovery. On completion they charged my card and sent me my request file "wallet.dat" via a dropbox. This worked great and must say they did an awesome job highly recommend this company!

you are a lucky man. Good job not giving up.

cr1776

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Quote from: papercoins on August 12, 2017, 03:12:20 PM

wanted to give an update as to what I did so that if anyone in future that has this kind of problem can take this route. I made an image of the hard drive and tried many different things which were suggested on this forum none of them worked for me. I sent my hard drive the original into a company called secure data recovery they are located in Ohio I believe. They ran a free diagnostics test on my hard drive and gave me a quote of a little under $2000. I pre authorized the charge via a credit card. They gave me a 5-11 business day window to complete the raw recovery. On completion they charged my card and sent me my request file "wallet.dat" via a dropbox. This worked great and must say they did an awesome job highly recommend this company!

Great.

Now make sure that you move the coins from whatever address(es) in that wallet.dat file into a newly created wallet (to ensure that you don't use an older pre-generated address in the old one) so that if there is a copy of that wallet.dat anywhere else, your coins are safe.

Something like Electrum or Bitcoin Core's HD wallet functionality are useful.

kiddikoddi

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Bounty Manager At your Service Please Pm me

Just get some software that recovers files and then recover the wallet it should work

morbius55

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So have you got all your BTC back?.

papercoins

newbie

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wanted to give an update as to what I did so that if anyone in future that has this kind of problem can take this route. I made an image of the hard drive and tried many different things which were suggested on this forum none of them worked for me. I sent my hard drive the original into a company called secure data recovery they are located in Ohio I believe. They ran a free diagnostics test on my hard drive and gave me a quote of a little under $2000. I pre authorized the charge via a credit card. They gave me a 5-11 business day window to complete the raw recovery. On completion they charged my card and sent me my request file "wallet.dat" via a dropbox. This worked great and must say they did an awesome job highly recommend this company!

ziploc+

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Merit: 10

if you didn't recover your wallet yet.....stop playing with your original drive...!!!

SSD have TRIM and Garbage Collection and other ''automated erasing'' functions....

You need to make a bit per bit image/copy of it and work on that....never ever play with you original drive

which OS and file system was on your SSD ?

vapourminer

legendary

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what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?

When you image the drive make sure you image the whole drive, not just the "in use" part, as there are usually two ways to image drives. One does a full image including "empty" space, that's the one you want. Macrium Reflect Free will do it.

HI-TEC99

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Merit: 2846

Quote from: SopaXT on July 21, 2017, 07:09:24 AM

I must admit that I am a complete idiot.
I meant pywallet, not btcrecover, sorry. Sad

btcrecover is for forgotten passwords, while I meant to suggest you to use pywallet.
pywallet (written by jackjack) is a tool to manipulate wallet files and that one can extract a wallet from an HDD image (sorry for confusing you again, I am such a dumbass!).

-> YOU NEED PYWALLET, NOT BTCRECOVER.

Here's the forum topic: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pywallet-22-manage-your-wallet-update-required-34028.

Install it on the machine with the image file stored, and then run the recovery.
If you need help with it, ask in the topic.

The real pywallet can help, but there's a fake pywallet which you mustn't use. SopaXT posted a link to the real pywallet thread, which leads to the legit github of a user called jackjack-jj. This is his legit pywallet github.

https://github.com/jackjack-jj/pywallet

The fake pywallet is on the github of a user called jj-jackjack, and it will steal your coins. See how similar the user names are? This is a warning posted about it.

Quote from: btchris on September 26, 2014, 06:56:11 AM

Quote from: ?? on ??

https :/ /github .com/ jj-jackjack/ pywallet

This is not a link to JackJack's new pywallet. This is an attempt to distribute malware.

Do not use the fake pywallet software in this link, it is malware. It will steal your wallet file and upload it to the attacker.

Ignore any pywallet download links which are not posted by JackJack himself.

edited: the scam post has been deleted; removed yelling.

philipma1957

legendary

Activity: 4326

Merit: 8950

'The right to privacy matters'

In the future for dirt fucking cheap here is what to do.

buy this

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N1KXE9K/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?

buy a hdd a little bigger then the one in the pc.

make sure your core wallet is empty with no coins in it.

clone the hdd in the pc to the second hdd.

take the copy put it in the pc and boot

you will have the exact same core wallet.

put in .001 btc to the wallet.

pull the clone put the original hdd back boot

after synching you will see the same wallet and the same 0.001 btc in it.

put the clone in a safe spot.

every once in a while pull the hdd out of the pc put the clone in to synch.

cheap safe way to guard your coins.

I have 3 clones of my hdd for my core wallet. one in a safe deposit box.

SopaXT

full member

Activity: 157

Merit: 113

I must admit that I am a complete idiot.
I meant pywallet, not btcrecover, sorry. Sad

btcrecover is for forgotten passwords, while I meant to suggest you to use pywallet.
pywallet (written by jackjack) is a tool to manipulate wallet files and that one can extract a wallet from an HDD image (sorry for confusing you again, I am such a dumbass!).

-> YOU NEED PYWALLET, NOT BTCRECOVER.

Here's the forum topic: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pywallet-22-manage-your-wallet-update-required-34028.

Install it on the machine with the image file stored, and then run the recovery.
If you need help with it, ask in the topic.

KenR

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Merit: 1000

「きみはこれ&#

Quote from: HCP on July 21, 2017, 03:13:14 AM

Did you try recovery software like Recuva and/or EaseUs? They may be able to recover your wallet.dat file.

He is confused,I doubt he know what he is doing.If you read the posts above,he thought he got the wallet file.

Quote from: SopaXT on July 20, 2017, 11:07:40 AM

Try using btcrecover (can anyone link the topic?).

Be careful with that tool.Have users posting bad experiences in the past,if you miss out a step from the tutorial,you will lose the only chance you have to recover your bitcoins.I don't recommend using it.

Quote from: papercoins on July 19, 2017, 10:57:00 PM

ok file did not work... I am going to try and use the hex editor to find the private keys. My wallet is encrypted with a passphrase (password) hopefully this will not be a huge problem but I do know it. Basically I had a large transfer recently which mainly is the balance of the account. Am I looking for a public key which follows by a private key eventually? If I know the address of the transfer does that help? Do I need only one private key to recover the lost bitcoins? Any help is appreciated.

File did not work doesn't explain much,does it ? You need to know the basics of bitcoin,start from here : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key

HCP

legendary

Activity: 2086

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Did you try recovery software like Recuva and/or EaseUs? They may be able to recover your wallet.dat file.

If you had a password on your wallet file, you won't be able to find the private key doing a sector by sector search as they are stored encrypted.

If you can't recover the wallet.dat, then I'm afraid your coins are gone. Undecided

papercoins

newbie

Activity: 12

Merit: 0

"It is designed for the case where you already know most of your password" this is what it says in description.
Sorry if this is a dumb question but when it says password what is this talking about the encryption password I set up? If so that's not my problem I cant find the wallet.dat file that also looks like is needed for this to work? I am running hex editor searching sector by sector for my bitcoin private key. I hope!

papercoins

newbie

Activity: 12

Merit: 0

ok I did this I made an imagine using another hard drive and yes I have not even booted the original drive. Also I have a ssd this shouldn't make a difference I assume? Will try this tonight.

SopaXT

full member

Activity: 157

Merit: 113

It's for extracting the wallet from an HDD image.

Get another hard drive, make an image of the one that you have in the computer and run btcrecover against it to find the wallet.
Read this: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/TUTORIAL.md#btcrecover-tutorial.

And DO NOT USE THE COMPUTER WITH THE WALLET FILE ON BEFORE YOU RECOVER IT.

papercoins

newbie

Activity: 12

Merit: 0

this is for finding the password right? I already know my password just need to get my wallet/privatekeys back I think?

SopaXT

full member

Activity: 157

Merit: 113

Try using btcrecover (can anyone link the topic?).

papercoins

newbie

Activity: 12

Merit: 0

ok file did not work... I am going to try and use the hex editor to find the private keys. My wallet is encrypted with a passphrase (password) hopefully this will not be a huge problem but I do know it. Basically I had a large transfer recently which mainly is the balance of the account. Am I looking for a public key which follows by a private key eventually? If I know the address of the transfer does that help? Do I need only one private key to recover the lost bitcoins? Any help is appreciated.

carlfebz2

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Activity: 2926

Merit: 722

Quote from: CryptoPR on July 19, 2017, 04:35:07 PM

wow you are lucky if you get back and the file is not corrupted. Make sure you are restoring on another computer and not overwriting the source disk. Also try to recover it yourself before going to a service. They may as well take your coins.

Very lucky indeed even myself didnt expect for this thing to happen on which a factory reset pc didnt lost all the files on previous settings. I dont know whats exactly op did but for sure it involved hdd recovery. To avoid these things better to secure those wallet.dat or any private keys on a offline state.
By the way, issue have been resolved better to lock this topic.

HI-TEC99

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Activity: 2772

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Quote from: CryptoPR on July 19, 2017, 04:35:07 PM

wow you are lucky if you get back and the file is not corrupted. Make sure you are restoring on another computer and not overwriting the source disk.

+1

You shouldn't run an operating system on the computer you lost the coins on. That could overwrite the bytes containing your coin's.

Put that computer's hard drive in an external USB case.

Even if your wallet.dat file is corrupt there is still a chance you can recover your coins.

Topic: factory reset wiped my files dont have private key? (Read 1754 times)