Recovering a forgotten wallet from a backup

External question — Bitcoin Stack Exchange Author: David Original post: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/125542 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. I have recently found an old drive that has a backup of a Bitcoin core wallet from back in 2009. Sadly I forgot all the passwords/phrases connected to it. Is it possible to somehow recover information from the backup files?

External answer — Bitcoin Stack Exchange Author: RedGrittyBrick Original post: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/125547 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. The encryption of the wallet is optional, if the wallet in 2009 didn't have a password, you don't need one to use that wallet. The current version of Bitcoin core uses the same encryption scheme and can read old wallets. Potentially useful information: Problems restoring wallet Is the unencrypted copy of the wallet still usable after a copy is encrypted? Is it possible to extract wallet_key (aes key) for encrypted master key from wallet.dat?

External answer — Bitcoin Stack Exchange Author: KeyBack Recovery Original post: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/131085 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. Before trying password recovery, it would be useful to identify exactly what the backup contains and whether the wallet is actually encrypted. If this really is a Bitcoin Core wallet from 2009, make a read-only copy of the original drive/backup first and avoid modifying the only surviving copy. If you still have the backup, what files do you have — specifically, is there a wallet.dat file? Also, when you try to load the wallet, does Bitcoin Core actually request a passphrase, or are you assuming one was used? Those two details would help distinguish an encrypted-wallet recovery problem from simply restoring an old unencrypted wallet.

External answer — Bitcoin Stack Exchange Author: Fab_Crypto_Recovers Original post: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/131095 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. A Bitcoin Core wallet from 2009 has no seed phrase, and it most likely has no password either. Bitcoin Core has never used seed phrases, and wallet encryption only arrived in version 0.4.0 in September 2011. If this backup was made in 2009 and the wallet was never opened in a later version, the keys in it are stored unencrypted. So the real question is whether this copy was encrypted at some later point. Here is how to find out and get to the coins. 1. Protect the original Copy the whole backup to a second drive and unplug the old one. Old drives can fail, so do this before anything else. Work only on copies from here on. Search the old drive for every wallet.dat , including copies in other folders, and note their dates. You may need an older copy in step 6. 2. Install a current Bitcoin Core Download it only from bitcoincore.org. Since version 30.0, Bitcoin Core can no longer load old Berkeley DB wallets. It can only migrate them to the newer descriptor format. Use version 30.2 or newer. Versions 30.0 and 30.1 had a migration bug that could delete the wallets folder in some cases, and their downloads were pulled. 3. Put a copy in the wallets folder Open Help > Debug window > Information to see your data directory. Inside it, create the folder wallets/old2009/ and put a copy of wallet.dat in it. 4. Migrate the wallet Warning: migration converts the file to the new format, and there is no way back. Bitcoin Core writes a .legacy.bak backup next to it first. Use a copy anyway. Open Window > Console and run: migratewallet "old2009" If it completes without a passphrase, the wallet is unencrypted and you have full access. If it stops because a passphrase is needed, the wallet was encrypted after 2011. Go to step 6. If it fails with a database error, the file may be damaged. Leave your original untouched and post the exact error here. 5. Sync and check the balance The wallet only shows coins once your node has the blocks they are in. Let Bitcoin Core download the full block chain, and leave pruning off, because a rescan needs the old blocks. If your node was already synced before you added the wallet, run rescanblockchain in the console. Coins from 2009 were often mining rewards paid straight to a public key. Some block explorers show those differently from normal addresses, so a full rescan in Bitcoin Core is the most reliable check. Once the balance shows, send the coins to a new wallet and back that wallet up properly. 6. If the wallet is encrypted First try the other wallet.dat copies from step 1. Encrypting a wallet does not change the keys it already holds. An older unencrypted copy still has the keys for coins received before encryption. It will not have keys created after encryption, because Bitcoin Core replaces the unused key pool when you encrypt. If that does not work, the password is the only way in: Write down every password you used in the years you might have encrypted it, plus the changes you usually make to them, like capitals or a number at the end. btcrecover tests such a list against a copy of the file. Its token mode combines fragments you remember. Get it from github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover and read the docs at btcrecover.readthedocs.io. Hashcat does the same on a GPU with mode 11300. bitcoin2john.py from John the Ripper extracts the hash it needs. Warning: run these tools offline and download them only from their official repositories. Fake recovery tools exist to steal wallet files. 7. The limits If the wallet is encrypted and the password is not in your list, nobody can decrypt it. Bitcoin Core has no backdoor and no reset. If no readable copy of wallet.dat exists, the keys are gone. Search every old drive and backup medium before you conclude that.