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Topic: Fried Hard Drive / Lost Bitcoin Chain Recoverable? (Read 1026 times)

sr. member
Activity: 392
Merit: 250
we are still here and we will stay forever.
September 13, 2016, 05:55:30 AM
#7
Hello,

I have lost access to my classic multi-bit wallet. Hard drive is totally dead and i don't have access to any back up files. I know my passcode key and i see the bitcoin on blockchain.info. Is there any way I can regain access?

Thank you!
______________.  There are a fair number of people around who are giving bad advice just to get their post count up and get their ads in front of people._________

my intention is to be helpful, if Iam wrong sides are right. that's the community.
and also without the signature campaign; this forum will be almost deserted, without the newbie, your legendary account not deserve anything, and without the ignorant, no one will be interested in your knowledge.
Hello,

I have lost access to my classic multi-bit wallet. Hard drive is totally dead and i don't have access to any back up files. I know my passcode key and i see the bitcoin on blockchain.info. Is there any way I can regain access?

Thank you!
check your PM.
hero member
Activity: 826
Merit: 504
It's recoverable based on what wallet you had. If you were using an online wallet, you probably can recover it.

You can't recover it using only the passphrase for clients like Armory or Bitcoin- though. With Armory or Electrum, if you have the paper backup handy, you can recover it.
sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 250
Yeah there are many stages of physical hard drive failure.
If you hear a clicking noise, keep it powered off, because this could indicate the heads dragging on the plates.
Keeping the disk spinning could be damaging your data beyond repair. 

But if you don't hear any noise you may be able to do a slow data recovery by cloning the disk with a tool like ddrescue. It can go back over bad sectors and eventually pull the data. 
If you have a lot of coins on the drive, as mentioned, it may be worth sending to a data recovery specialist. Be warned that most of these places are going to charge you $500-1000 to pull the platters in a clean room and read the data on specialized machines.
legendary
Activity: 4018
Merit: 1299
Hello,

I have lost access to my classic multi-bit wallet. Hard drive is totally dead and i don't have access to any back up files. I know my passcode key and i see the bitcoin on blockchain.info. Is there any way I can regain access?

Thank you!

As achow101 stated, there is a difference between HD and Classic, he gave you good advice.  There are a fair number of people around who are giving bad advice just to get their post count up and get their ads in front of people.

Depending on the number of bitcoins stored in the wallet, you could use one of the hard disk recovery services (e.g. ones such as DriveSavers).  This would be good for a larger number of bitcoins though.  Some of them charge by the GB recovered, and I think they'd try to recover the entire drive.  You might pay anywhere from $300 to $3000 to recover the drive.  So if you only had 1 bitcoin, it might not be worth it (unless you had other important items there).  If you had 10 or 20 or more, it could easily be worth it.

staff
Activity: 3374
Merit: 6530
Just writing some code
Hello,

I have lost access to my classic multi-bit wallet. Hard drive is totally dead and i don't have access to any back up files. I know my passcode key and i see the bitcoin on blockchain.info. Is there any way I can regain access?

Thank you!
Without the wallet file, you can't do anything. Your passphrase is exclusively for encrypting the wallet file, nothing else. Nothing can be done except hard drive recovery. Your Bitcoin is likely lost.

if u keep the pass phrases that you have used to create the wallet it's possible,you have only to download the classic multi-bit wallet and restore your wallet using the pass phrases.
It's multibit classic, not HD. There are no seed phrases, it is not a deterministic wallet.
sr. member
Activity: 392
Merit: 250
we are still here and we will stay forever.
Hello,

I have lost access to my classic multi-bit wallet. Hard drive is totally dead and i don't have access to any back up files. I know my passcode key and i see the bitcoin on blockchain.info. Is there any way I can regain access?

Thank you!
if u keep the pass phrases that you have used to create the wallet it's possible,you have only to download the classic multi-bit wallet and restore your wallet using the pass phrases.
newbie
Activity: 1
Merit: 0
Hello,

I have lost access to my classic multi-bit wallet. Hard drive is totally dead and i don't have access to any back up files. I know my passcode key and i see the bitcoin on blockchain.info. Is there any way I can regain access?

Thank you!
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