Lost ~5.256BTC on Electrum wallet file. Any help would be appreciated.

[unibtc]

I just lost approx. 5.256BTC on my Electrum wallet. How?

First, I use the older version which is electrum 1.9.8.

My default_wallet file is getting bigger and slower because of multiple txs and addresses, so i decided to create a new wallet and send my btc there.. So here is the detailed description of what happened.

1. I opened two Electrum programs. Lets call it Elec1 and Elec2.

2. They both will open the default_wallet file. So i see my bitcoins on both Electrum.

3. On Elec2, I clicked New/Restore, It will open a save file dialog. I wanted my New wallet to be the default_wallet when it opens. So on the save file dialog, I made a backup of the old default_wallet by copying and pasting it. Then i deleted the default_wallet.

4. I named my new wallet as default_wallet, and click save.

5. After going trough the process of creating wallet, i finally created my new wallet.

6. I copied one of the new address on my new wallet, and using Elec1, I sent my bitcoin to that new address.Everything went well, I received my bitcoins on the new wallet address.

7. My Elec2 got stuck on synchronizing, So to be able to test my new wallet, i took the private key of the address that got my bitcoins, and took another address from the list, and sent my bitcoins using coinb.in. It went fine and smoothly, i got my bitcoins on the other address.

8. I then closed Elec1.. And this is where the problem occurred.

9. My Elec2, was still stuck on synchronizing, and every time i get this issue, i just open another wallet file, then go back and open the default wallet again.

10. So i opened another wallet file(not the default_wallet), Then i went back and opened default_wallet again.. And to my surprise! This is is the old default wallet. It has my old addresses. And it does not contain any of the new addresses or my bitcoins.

What happened was, When i closed Elec1, it overwrite the default_wallet file containing my new addresses.

And sadly, i did not also backup my new seed..

I have read before that it is possible to get the master private key of the wallet if i have one of the private key of its child and the master public key. But i only have the private key of the child and not the master public key. I'm not sure if this is the same case, but any help would be appreciated.

[CryptKeeper]

If you recover your wallet by entering the 13-word seed, you should be fine!

[The_Void]

No no no, he mentioned that he HASNT MADE A BACKUP of SEED of the new file, so HE HAS NO possibility to recover a wallet from a seed.

I suggest doing such a thing. Its not connected to bitcoin wallets, its connected with hard drive serving. You see, your hard drive has ALL THE FILES that youve RECENTLY DELETED (EVEN FROM THE TRASH BIN) UNTIL THEYLL BE OVERWRITTEN BY SOME OTHER FILE. This means, you must stop writing any large amounts of info on that drive, and then download a trustful program that is able to searh for this kind of files and recover them.

I remember I needed this kind of progrm 4 years ago or so. Find them in google. Try these: Acronis Disk Director, Piriform Recuva (try this first), Wise Data Recovery, Undelete 360, Pandora Recovery and other programs from such a class. ONLY THEY CAN HELP NOW!

When running such a program you musr enter in search field a specific name or names of files need to be found. So, try to find on your hard drive all the files named like "default_wallet.dat" or whatever your default wallet filename is. or try search "default_wallet.*" (* means any type of file).

Remember, that even if files are deleted drom MBR table, they are still on a drive, physically, but only if the system hasnt OVERWRITTEN them by some other crap.

[CryptKeeper]

That's why you have to re-enter the seed words into electrum when you create the wallet! Guess he has only copied them into the clipboard and then pasted it back.

Epic fail.

[creationlayer]

You would need to find the wallet file, if you wrote over default wallet, then it won't store the same HD wallet seed.

If you generated a one time address instead of clicking receive and using one from the pool for your seed, then it is not recoverable simply by using the words or re-opening the other wallet file necessarily.

[Voluntary]

re: help - the advice from The Void is probably your best bet.

It is imperative to save Electrum's wallet seed - however... It's *not* a good idea to save it as a plain text file. Instead of that, you could very carefully and neatly write out the seed by hand (or print it if you trust your printer / home network...) and keep that somewhere safe and / or learn how to use encryption (PGP, GPG, whole disk encryption etc) and encrypt the seed as a message to yourself. Be sure to keep a few copies of your GPG private key *and* be careful to choose a passphrase that you won't easily forget. Lyn Ulbricht learned how to encrypt so, chances are, a lot more people can apply themselves and learn it too.

[torusJKL]

That's why you have to re-enter the seed words into electrum when you create the wallet! Guess he has only copied them into the clipboard and then pasted it back.

The next version of electrum will not allow for this simple copy paste anymore.
Hopefully people will start to write the seed down.

[den.amir]

waw patient