I have an old electrum wallet.dat that is password protected.
I know the password, but the seed is lost.
Can this be recovered?
When trying to open the wallet in electrum, there is an error
1 Answer
According to https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html
The default wallet file is called default_wallet, which is created when you first run the application and is located in the /wallets folder, inside the datadir.
So, as Claris commented, wallet.dat is a name used by Bitcoin-core and you can't expect Electrum to read a file created by different software for its own purposes.
See How can I transfer a Bitcoin-qt wallet to Electrum? but take care to understand the implications of importing private keys into a HD wallet which has a recovery phrase. There is a danger that any future recovery process will lose your money.
You could instead download bitcoin core, run it and stop it, then replace its wallet.dat with a copy of your old wallet.dat then rrestart bitcoin core to see if it loads that file.
answered Nov 8, 2021 at 11:21
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Ok, i never realised about core. So is electrum redundant, i can just open the wallet.dat another way? The wallet was created in electrum about 6 or 7 years ago.– DerpleNov 8, 2021 at 16:56
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1@Derple: Could you have experimented with Bitcoin core 6 or 7 years ago and then decided to use Electrum instead? As far as I know, Electrum never creates a file named wallet.dat. Also see updates answer. Nov 8, 2021 at 16:59
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There is nothing redundant about Electrum, it's just a separate project, unrelated to Bitcoin Core. Bitcoin Core uses
wallet.datfiles; Electrum does not. Nov 8, 2021 at 21:01 -
wallet.datis not an Electrum wallet, it is a Bitcoin Core wallet.