Recovering Wallet.dat from Formatted HDD

Hey guys, Just found an old HDD where I was mining Bitcoin ages ago. The thing is, it got formatted after a fresh OS install. What would be the best tool for trying to recover my wallet.dat? Is R-Studio Pro worth it?

Important tip: make a byte-by-byte clone of your HDD first, trust me on this. R-Studio could help but since you formatted it, the chances are high that your wallet is corrupted now. Still, give it a shot after backing up. And yeah, look for those "magic bytes" followed by a 64-byte private key. Plenty of guides here, just hit the search bar.

Formatting usually does a quick job, not a random/zero fill, so that’s something. But reinstalling an OS writes a lot of data too. Pywallet could be useful, it scans the whole HDD and an image of it.

Is Pywallet better than R-Studio? I get that formatting changes data to zero, making it look like free space. So, if I want to recover, I guess I’d need to use R-Studio's Hex Signature search with the known file type.

Not sure about R-Studio, I don’t use it. But it’s often suggested for finding hidden or deleted wallet.dat files. From what I've seen, just install Python and learn some command line basics for using Pywallet.

Been using X-ways Forensics since 2011, it's solid for regex searches in unallocated disk space. I’d scan for wallet.dat headers there: 2009-2012 header: \x00\x05\x31\x62\x00\x00\x00\x02 2017 change: \x00\x05\x31\x62\x00\x00\x00\x03.

R-Studio is said to be the most advanced forensic tool out there, but I dunno about that. If your wallet's from 2009, that header should be valid. But can I use it to create a known file type for hex search?

X-ways is actually more advanced than R-Studio. I’ve only tried R-Studio once years ago. Maybe you should give that open-source option a try? Their regex may work differently, but it could still be effective.

You mean Pywallet when you say open-source? Gonna download X-ways today and see if I can find the files you mentioned.

Just a heads up, you should check the new wallet.dat in a hex viewer. That’s easier than all the steps you were planning. And yeah, the XML is for R-Studio, so good luck with that.

I compared R-Studio and X-ways. Yeah, X-ways is super advanced, but I only need regex features. If I find a corrupted file, could you help me fix it?

If you're looking in unallocated space, be aware there's a chance the file's fragmented. The old file details might be gone, and you might need more advanced tools like X-ways. Even then, recovering a fragmented file isn't guaranteed.

I’m just focusing on R-Studio since I’ve got a license for a bit longer. I’ll spend time learning regex in it. I remember the tech did copy the C drive when formatting D, so here’s hoping.

Only if you didn’t delete the D partition when formatting. If it’s intact, you might still have a shot. If the wallet.dat was on D:/, you’re in a better spot. If it’s corrupted, try copying it and see if you can use it.