Ignorant man needing Tech questions answered.

[kingskid1611]

Okay, with all the craze over this crypto currency, like bitcoins. I have accumulated hundreds of hard drives from lots of computers over the years. I am wondering how to check to see if there is any bitcoins located on them? These are hard drives that I can't bring myself just to scrap just in case there is personal information on them. I don't know a good way to destroy them so I have just stored them. I hear stories of how people threw their computers out that had a lot of bitcoins on them and can't get them back so I was thinking there may be some on these that I have too. Any ideas or is it just a waste of my time to check them out?

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Diving for Pleasure and Treasure - Grab it through Amazon!

[Terry Soloman]

Everybody needs a wet dream at some point in their life. Best of luck!

 

[Owassokie]

My (fairly) limited understanding of cryptocurrency is that every coin has a crypto key. If you don't possess the key, you don't posses the coin. If the references to "lost bitcoin" is the loss of the key, then I suppose there is a chance since the 'ledger' is public. That said, I imagine it's a very small chance but if you did find some, it would be like hitting the lottery. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than I can speak to it.

 

[JrMack]

Its my understanding that when you mine bitcoin you have to have an account called a wallet witch you can then have converted to money directly deposited into your bank account or on a card kind of like a debit card, any coins you have will require a username and password, and transaction number. Hope this helps

 

[toddbbq]

my best guess is to look in any .txt = text document or .wrd Word documents or just do a keyword search Bitcoin on the slaved hard drive

 

[Jason in Enid]

If you want to check the drives you will need an old (but still functional) tower computer system. Then just go through your drives one at a time, plug them into the serial cable and the power supply.

 

[Red James Cash]

You might need two different towers though,there were two different hard drive types,SATA and another one which i forget off hand.

 

[CA49]

To mine bitcoin you have to have a "wallet" to store the mined bitcoins. I'd google what wallet software's were available in the early days (there are a bunch now) and see if any of them are installed. I believe one of the older wallets had a file name "wallet.dat.” so add that to your search. If you can find the .dat file and the program then you may be able to open and recover the coins stored in the .dat file. Note that the file is probably encrypted / password protected so if you don't have the password then good luck.

RE: destroying hard drives, that's a two parter. If you can get to it online then use a "disk wipe" program which can be found for free and it overwrites all data with random binary data (0 and 1). Formattimg drives is not a good solution. To physically destroy a drive, I first take them apart to get the magnets then destroy the discs inside via hammer, tinsnip or I've heard the best method is to grind the drive but that seems like overkill.

 

[WaterScoop]

Bitcoin... pie in the sky ..I do not trust


30% loss as of today

I’ll keep my gold and silver at least I can touch it.

https://www.ft.com/content/a72a61dc-e6f2-11e7-8b99-0191e45377ec

 

[fistfulladirt]

Bitcoin... pie in the sky ..I do not trust


30% loss as of today

I’ll keep my gold and silver at least I can touch it.

https://www.ft.com/content/a72a61dc-e6f2-11e7-8b99-0191e45377ec

It seems BTC has had several losses. It keeps coming back with even higher gains. It's also not an overnight sensation.

 

[kingskid1611]

Bitcoin... pie in the sky ..I do not trust


30% loss as of today

I’ll keep my gold and silver at least I can touch it.

https://www.ft.com/content/a72a61dc-e6f2-11e7-8b99-0191e45377ec

Yep that why I titled it Ignorant man....I do not claim any knowledge on this stuff and I'm with you If I can't touch it, it don't exist. Thanks everyone for the replies