Recovering Deleted Wallets
One of the questions we get asked the most is “Is it possible to recover a wallet that’s been deleted?“. Well, that depends on a number of things…
First of all, have you still got your recovery seeds? These are usually 12 or 24 words that are used to recreate and recover your wallet if access to it is lost (eg. if you’ve accidentally deleted your wallet). If you’ve still got the seeds then you’ve still got your cryptocurrency, you just need to import your seeds into a compatible wallet to have access to your funds again.
Assuming you’ve not got your seeds then recovering a deleted wallet depends on:
1. The Type of Wallet
Wallets can be simple and support one coin only eg. a basic Bitcoin wallet that is stored on a hard drive, to complex cross chain DeFi wallets eg. Trust Wallet. Usually the simpler the wallet the easier it is to recover the data, but popular DeFi wallets such as Metamask are well documented and deleted wallet recovery is certainly possible.
2. The Age of the Wallet
The older the wallet the more likely it is that it was created using a computer rather than a phone. In the early days new cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin and Dogecoin were created as forks of Bitcoin and so used the same type of wallet architecture. Wallets were saved on hard drives in a wallet.dat file and sometimes these files didn’t even have password protection. It is usually possible to successfully recover wallet.dat files, even from devices that are broken, contact us for further details.
As time went by people moved to smartphones and these days most crypto wallets are phone based rather than PC or Mac based.
3. Where the Wallet was Saved
- Wallet saved to a PC, Mac or Memory Stick
If the wallet was deleted from a PC, Mac or memory stick please read our page on how to handle deleted data on PCs and Macs - Wallet saved to a Phone
Whether you use an Android or Apple iPhone, there are hundreds of cryptocurrency wallet apps available. Some are decent and recovering deleted wallets from them is possible, others are not so friendly towards recovery attempts. Most work by creating a ‘vault’ where the wallet data is held, recovering the wallet means accessing and deciphering the vault data so information such as the private keys and seed words can be extracted, which allow the wallet and its contents to be recreated and recovered. - Wallet saved to a Hardware Wallet eg. Trezor, Ledger Nano
If you’ve created a new wallet over the top of your old one then you can recover your old wallet using your old seed words. If you’ve lost the old seed words then the old wallet is lost for good. If you’ve got some of the seeds then a recovery may be possible and we may be able to reconstruct the rest of them. Please contact us.
4. How the Wallet was Deleted
a) Wallet was deleted from a hard drive:
- New wallet installed over the top of the old wallet
- PC: Recovery may be possible
- Mac: Recovery may be possible
- Hard drive is an SSD with TRIM enabled:
- PC: Recovery of wallet not possible
- Mac: Recovery of wallet not possible
- Hard drive completely overwritten:
- PC: Recovery of wallet not possible
- Mac: Recovery of wallet not possible
- Hard drive partially overwritten:
- PC: Recovery may be possible
- Mac: Recovery of wallet not possible
- OS re-installed on hard drive:
- PC: Recovery may be possible
- Mac: Recovery of wallet not possible
- Hard drive reformatted:
- PC: Recovery may be possible
- Mac: Recovery of wallet not possible
- Wallet moved into trash:
- PC: Recovery should be possible
- Mac: Recovery should be possible
- Wallet moved into trash and trash emptied:
- PC: Recovery may be possible
- Mac: Recovery of wallet not possible
(b) Wallet was deleted from a Phone:
- Phone was factory reset: Data is gone, no wallet recovery possible
- App was uninstalled / reinstalled: Dependent on App, wallet recovery may be possible
- New wallet created, old wallet now inaccessible: Dependent on App, wallet recovery may be possible
- Wallet disappeared after an update: Dependent on App, wallet recovery may be possible
5. The Condition of the Hardware Device
- Hard Drive is broken and not working: Wallet recovery possible
- Phone not working: Wallet recovery possible
- Hardware Wallet (Trezor, Nano) broken: Wallet recovery possible
What To Do Next
Once you’ve been through the list and assessed the chances for recovering your deleted wallet please get in touch if you’d like our assistance.