I just purchased a new laptop and I want to decommission my old one. I have a back-up of my wallet.dat file copied to my new PC. What do I need to do to restore it to my Bitcoin (Windows) client? Please note, this is a wallet.dat file that is about 6 months old and I haven't loaded it in at least four months. I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not, contingent on the original version of the client that created the file.
You need to put the old wallet.dat in your bitcoin data directory.
The default for Windows is:
C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Application data\Bitcoin (XP)
C:\Users\YourUserName\Appdata\Roaming\Bitcoin (Vista and 7)
Then run the bitcoin client with the -rescan option.
Alternatively you can run the bitcoin client with the -datadir=<location of backup wallet.dat> as well as the -rescan option if you do not want to move/backup the new wallet.dat.
The default for Mac OS X is:
~/Library/Application\Support\Bitcoin
The default for Linux is:
~/.bitcoin
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4It worked on Ubuntu too, but the wallet file was located at
~/.bitcoin– Jader Dias Sep 2 '11 at 18:34 -
4
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6Note that since 0.3.21 it is not necessary anymore to specify -rescan when moving a wallet file to a new installation. – Pieter Wuille Mar 26 '12 at 13:13
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That requires that you wipe out the other wallet. How can you merge the two? – Andrew Arnott Jun 20 '14 at 3:02
