Topic: Migrating Ledger Live to new laptop (Read 169 times)

Please take an hour of your time and learn the basic mechanics of how seeds, private and public keys work on a blockchain especially in relation to Software interfaces like Ledger Live.
This lack of knowledge might make you lose your coins later down the road.

Quick digest:

You have a 12 or 24 word seed. This seed generates public and private keys.
Your ledger device connects to your PC and to your Ledger Live software.
Your ledger device provides public key upon request by Ledger Live software.
Your Ledger Live software checks the blockchain data against your public key and loads that data from the blockchain to populate your account history.

Your wallet data & history on your PC / Ledger live is only a copy from the blockchain. You can delete it at any time it doesn't have any impact on the data stored in the actual Blockchain.

Ledger Live is asking for transactions to be signed. Your Ledger device signs transactions (it never gives out your seed, it never gives out your private key).


Any time you want to restore Ledger Live on any PC/Laptop (even if for example your Laptop breaks), you can simply connect your Ledger device and it will repopulate the data from the blockchain.

Ultimately the most important part is to have your SEED WORDS SECURED.
As long as you have your 12 or 24 Seed words, your devices (Ledger, PC, Laptop) can be stolen, broken, destroyed, bricked, deleted, whatever and you will always be able to restore your access just from your seed words.

I suggest to watch the first 5 videos on that playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqyc7vcDEEqgQuKeN4F1j3thUckevmg8d
They cover the basics of how seeds words and keys work in greater detail.


On a side note. If you have only your Hardware Wallet Ledger device, without proper backups. All your coins will be lost if the Ledger device itself ever breaks or if you lose that flimsy paper that comes with it to write down your seed words.

Make 3 seed backups in steel washers (or titanium). And ideally encrypt them with a simple cipher (easiest and fastest youtube link with timestamp here
) or use a passphrase and store that separately.

Earthquake proof, Low cost, affordable, easily scalable, indestructible, fireproof 1400°C (a house fire is around 1100°C), waterproof, corrosion proof, shock proof, offline cold wallet, seed or passphrase backup.

https://i.etsystatic.com/41503409/r/il/689efd/4813988559/il_1588xN.4813988559_fcds.jpg
Picture taken from here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1434977816

More information on that topic here:

https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/
https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/diy-cryptosteel-capsule.html
http://bulletproofbitcoin.com/
https://blog.lopp.net/a-treatise-on-bitcoin-seed-backup-device-design/
https://www.econoalchemist.com/post/backup
https://blockmit.com/english/guides/diy/make-cold-wallet-washers/
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/securing-your-seed-phrase-with-washers-5389446

Not exactly. In this particular case, OP didn't need to recover his wallet from seed. His Nano X works and holds the seed and private keys. He only changed his laptop. By installing Ledger Live on the new laptop, he would only need to connect the already preconfigured Nano X. After installing the needed coins and scanning his accounts, his balances would be updated. The seed was always in the device regardless the change of laptop.

I wasn't thinking exclusively about Ledger Live, but in general in the sense that someone wants to get rid of an old laptop or desktop computer on which they had some important data at any time. In this particular case, some information could be extracted from the disk, which could only be a threat to the OP's privacy.

Ledger Live apps doesn’t contain your private key. It’s just a tool to view your asset inside your hardware wallet(Nano X) that connected on it. There willbe no harm if you will uninstall install this app because your hardware wallet store your assets and it’s the most important thing to keep safe.

You can view Ledger live as metamask that only load your hardware wallet balance but your asset never leaves on your hardware wallet even if you connected if on ledger live.

But is something like that really needed if all he has is Ledger Live app? I mean I could understand physically detroying drive if you had Electrum or similar type of wallet, but in his case where private keys never left Ledger what kind of info could someone retreive that could endager his crypto, even if they manage to restore the data?

Of course, it's safe if the whole thing works on the new device, in fact you made a wallet/s recovery and the old laptop can only represent an additional risk. In case you plan to sell or give that old laptop to someone, I would suggest that you format the disk and maybe even try to use some additional tools that can almost completely erase the data from the disk. I usually never sell or give away such sensitive things, regardless of all methods, today's technology can save data even from disks that look completely destroyed to someone.

The good old method is still physical destruction by breaking the disc into pieces (use protective equipment), then douse it with some flammable liquid and set it on fire, and scatter the remains in a landfill.

That is exactly the point.

You don't need ledger live neither the device.

All you need is the seed phrase.

With the seed you can recover funds in another software (electrum) or another hardware  device or even a combination of both (device + electrum)

It should be clarified that backups are hardware wallet device, not a ledger live application. Ledger Live app files will contain only information about your settings, nothing more. That is, you must keep backup copies of the seed phrase, otherwise you will not be able to access to HW device if it breaks or is reset to factory settings.


Even if you do none of the above, it will in no way affect the safety of crypto on the Ledger Nano X in this case.

You are in good hands if you have your recovery seed saved, the only way to have access to your wallet funds is the recovery seed, it's not as if once you plug in the hardware wallet into a laptop the wallet will port from the hardware device and go into the laptop, even if your laptop got blown up or died any time, your recovery seed is the only way to restore your assets again.

I advice you do some practice with a wallet recovery seed first to understand this better, it is not hard to understand. You can .

1. Format your laptop without backing up the wallet, it doesn't matter so far you have your recovery seed saved somewhere else.

2. You can uninstall your wallet on laptops so far you have your recovery seed.

The only way to bring back your asset balance is by importing your recovery seed, your backed up recovery seed is the KEY.

The answer is you should rely on neither your old laptop nor your new one. The wallet you have installed on both of these devices just gives you the ability to interact with the blockchain, but it would not be possible without something called a seed phrase that has real power. It is the seed phrase that ensures you have a right to certain pieces of information stored on a blockchain, and it allows you to create cryptographic signatures proving your ownership over the funds. As long as you keep your seed phrase in a safe place and only touch it when you need to export to a new wallet, you retain control over cryptocurrency and thus should not be worried. You can have a single secret key (your seed phrase) and an unlimited number of devices on which this secret was used to create a wallet. If some of these devices get dysfunctional, you can create a wallet on some other and regain access to your funds on the blockchain.

What is most important is your seed phrase, if you have your seed phrase you your coins.

You have setup Ledger Live on your new device, you have access to your coins, you spend from it, then you can delete the old wallet. But just as I have meant, it is not the new device that you have your Ledger Live that is most important, what that is most important is your seed phrase offline backups, which you can use at anytime to recover your coins.

Of course it is as your crypto is not on the app itself. As a matter of fact, you don't even need the app in order to access your funds so no worries about that (you can for example connect your Ledger to Electrum and send bitcoin that way).

If you have your wallet backups and can use it to recover your wallet, it means your backups are usable.

You can uninstall app on your old laptop and format disks, wipe out operating system, if you no longer want to use that laptop.

I have Ledger Live (Nano X) installed on my old laptop. Yesterday I received a new laptop and installed Live on that laptop. When I connected Nano X to the new laptop, after some configuration all my accounts came to the new laptop. I can see all my accounts and balances there. I even withdraw some funds from CEX to the new Live app on the new laptop. Is it safe to delete Live app from the old laptop now? Or how to make sure that I am safe and can get rid of the old laptop?