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Sometimes I nearly shed a tear when I open my wallet that shows me how many coins it held over its lifetime. It even converts it into my local currency as if to

Sometimes I nearly shed a tear when I open my wallet that shows me how many coins it held over its lifetime. It even converts it into my local currency as if to mock me. I remember times where those Bitcoin faucets (is that still a thing?) gave you 50BTC every X hours just for entering your wallet address. Of course I spend nearly all of them on stupid stuff later on but before they gained considerable value. I still have an old external HDD with somewhere between 20-50BTC on it that I broke and haven’t had the money to fix it and retrieve them.

pault 8y ago
You can't afford to fix a hard drive with $250,000 on it? Can't you borrow some money against that?
- kevingrahl 8y ago
  It’s questionable if the data can even be restored. Plus there’s more sensitive data than just Bitcoin private keys on that disk I’m not really that comfortable sending that in to some lab for data recovery. When the disk broke I inquired what it would probably cost to retrieve the data and I was quoted with something around 150-300€ which to me is too much just for the small chance to actually get those coins. I don’t like to gamble.
  - AndrewGaspar 8y ago
    Discounting the sensitive data issue (I don't know what keeping that confidential is worth to you), a few hundred bucks for what I presume is a good chance at a 1000x up-side doesn't seem like much of a gamble to me.
    - kevingrahl 8y ago
      I assume you have more disposable income than me. For me this would be a gamble and like I said the chance of data recovery isn’t to high in my case that’s why I haven’t done it mainly. I had someone who works with HDD’s take a look at it and he assumed that most likely the platter itself was severely damaged/scratched. And there was something about the encryption in addition to the scratches that would’ve made recovery not that likely. Please note that I have absolutely no idea about HDD data recovery and am only remembering what I’ve been told a few years ago.
      - pault 8y ago
        Sell it as-is for €1,000 to someone that is willing to take the risk. :D
        kevingrahl 8y ago
        While 1k does sound somewhat enticing that disk was my secure storage holding all my passwords (albeit old ones), ssh keys, wallet seeds, pgp keys, 2FA backups, payslips, bank statements.. you name it it’s probably on there.. I just keep it in case I get some unexpected money that would allow me to get it fixed securely under supervision. I’m a tiny bit paranoid about that particular disk falling into the wrong hands even if it’s broken :) And well.. I didn’t exactly loose any money on it since I didn’t buy those coins with real money so I’m not too frustrated about it. But it was a great lesson advocating for redundancy! Now I have everything storage related in pairs. One storage server at home, one offsite etc.. (I didn’t loose everything, most stuff wasn’t that important)
deleted 8y ago
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pault 8y ago

You can't afford to fix a hard drive with $250,000 on it? Can't you borrow some money against that?

kevingrahl 8y ago
It’s questionable if the data can even be restored. Plus there’s more sensitive data than just Bitcoin private keys on that disk I’m not really that comfortable sending that in to some lab for data recovery. When the disk broke I inquired what it would probably cost to retrieve the data and I was quoted with something around 150-300€ which to me is too much just for the small chance to actually get those coins. I don’t like to gamble.
- AndrewGaspar 8y ago
  Discounting the sensitive data issue (I don't know what keeping that confidential is worth to you), a few hundred bucks for what I presume is a good chance at a 1000x up-side doesn't seem like much of a gamble to me.
  - kevingrahl 8y ago
    I assume you have more disposable income than me. For me this would be a gamble and like I said the chance of data recovery isn’t to high in my case that’s why I haven’t done it mainly. I had someone who works with HDD’s take a look at it and he assumed that most likely the platter itself was severely damaged/scratched. And there was something about the encryption in addition to the scratches that would’ve made recovery not that likely. Please note that I have absolutely no idea about HDD data recovery and am only remembering what I’ve been told a few years ago.
    - pault 8y ago
      Sell it as-is for €1,000 to someone that is willing to take the risk. :D
      - kevingrahl 8y ago
        While 1k does sound somewhat enticing that disk was my secure storage holding all my passwords (albeit old ones), ssh keys, wallet seeds, pgp keys, 2FA backups, payslips, bank statements.. you name it it’s probably on there.. I just keep it in case I get some unexpected money that would allow me to get it fixed securely under supervision. I’m a tiny bit paranoid about that particular disk falling into the wrong hands even if it’s broken :) And well.. I didn’t exactly loose any money on it since I didn’t buy those coins with real money so I’m not too frustrated about it. But it was a great lesson advocating for redundancy! Now I have everything storage related in pairs. One storage server at home, one offsite etc.. (I didn’t loose everything, most stuff wasn’t that important)

deleted 8y ago

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