1
Sequence of event:
a) backup of wallet created b) created new receiving address c) coins tranferred to new address d) wallet deleted
I've restored the wallet from (a) - but it does not have the address (created in b) I'd transferred the coins to. Can I assume the coins are now gone?
Thanks!
3
Coins are gone when you can't recover your private key.
If you have used a non hd wallet (and i think you did), you can check if your bitcoin wallet supports keypools. Keypools are a set of pre-generated keyprairs (pub/privkey) which can be used when a new key is required. Because generating a key (non HD) in a encrypted environment needs to unencrypted (you would need to enter your password), keypools make sense in non-hd wallets.
With keypools (and i think you used a non-keypool wallet) there is a chance that your receiving address's private key – which you used after you created your backup – is still on the disk.
Last chance you have is to try to recover your deleted wallet file. Therefore best you could do, stop using/writing on the disk where your wallet was stored. Filesystems mostly don't really delete files (write the bits to 0), they mostly just allow other data to be written in that space. Because of that, you can use undelete software to try to extract deleted data from your disk. You should try to tell your undelete software, how your lost wallet file does look like (files magic, file structure) and this could be hard and probably requires a professional.
There are always chances to recover data and i hear of people successfully recovering data from physical damaged hard drives (fire, etc.). It always depends on how valuable the lost data is/was. A data-recovering in the laboratory can cost around 1000USD.
Next time it's maybe worth to use a HD wallet. During the creation process you can write down the master seed (sometimes a hex string, sometimes a wordlist, depending on the wallet). If using HD, this master seed technically allows you to recover all your possible private keys.
21) Are you using Bitcoin Core? 2) Is the wallet done syncing? – Nick ODell – 2015-06-10T02:01:59.213
How many other addresses were created between (a) and (b)? Some wallets use a key pool. For instance, with Bitcoin Core, the next 100 keys to be used are generated in advance, so if fewer than 100 new addresses were created between (a) and (b), the backup from (a) should contain the private key for the address "created" at (b). – Nate Eldredge – 2015-06-10T05:37:12.850
How did you check that the restored wallet does not have the coins? What exactly are you seeing (and what software are you using)? – Nate Eldredge – 2015-06-10T05:38:09.667
Software used was multibit. And I created the addresses manually. The wallet was not backed up after creating the addresses manually. I've tried to refresh the bitchain - but no sign of the missing coins. – Ron_d1 – 2015-06-10T09:56:17.197
MultiBit (Classic) unfortunately does not maintain a hidden keypool, it requires a new backup following each newly-created address. It does create backups of the .wallet file and also the individual private keys in .key files, have you checked if you have those on your hard drive (will be located in a folder near the .wallet file)? Can you go into more detail on how the wallet got deleted? – Christopher Gurnee – 2015-06-10T11:58:17.623
1If you have deleted your wallet file accidentally and you still can access your disk, don't produce more data delta (don't start and use your system!), connect your hard drive to a different machine and try to recover deleted files (undelete, google it). You need to know that if you do a normal "delete" on a mac/pc or linux, it won't really clear the bits on your drive. Instead it just allows other write operation to uses that space (that's why you should stop using/working on the disk immediately). – Jonas Schnelli – 2015-06-10T19:45:22.037
@ChristopherGurnee I didn't know you ran the btcrecover project! It just clicked why you are so versed in all the wallet recovery techniques ;) – Wizard Of Ozzie – 2015-06-11T03:37:05.667
@WizardOfOzzie Yup, btcrecover is my repo :) – Christopher Gurnee – 2015-06-11T14:44:58.723