How to recover zcash from non bootable external harddisk

Technical Support
1

ubuntu is not bootable but file is still on zcash directory on harddisk how to recover in that case? Thanks a lot for your help

2

Hello, sorry to hear about your situation!
Hopefully I can help,

First, you’re going to need to make a bootable linux usb disk, depending on your experience you can use a distro of your choice, from reading your post, I’m going to recommend ubuntu:

Once you’ve booted your computer into the ubuntu live system, you’re going to want to plug in your external harddisk, open a terminal in ubuntu, and run
$ “dmesg”
, the latter end of the output should identify where your usb device is plugged in, it will look something like “/dev/sdb1”
take note of this.

Now you will want to mount your external hard disk like so:
"mkdir ~/externalhdd" “sudo mount /dev/(your drive) ~/externalhdd”

You should now be able to cd into the mount point of your external hdd:
$ “cd ~/externalhdd”

And browse to your zcash file location:

$ “cd /home/(your old user)/.zcash/”

You can now copy all of your wallet files to another usb disk, your ubuntu live media, or scp to another computer.

Hopefully I helped, feel free to ask questions as I was a little unsure of some of the specifics of your circumstances, so some (or all) of what I said may or may not be applicable, if that is the case maybe we can get a little more information from you so we can better understand your problem!
Hopeful I helped,
~Sam

1 Like
3

The most important thing is to have a current copy of your wallet.dat file. If your Ubuntu install can’t be made bootable again and you have a slow internet connection you might also want to backup your .zcash and .zcash-params folders so that you can just copy them back after a fresh install of the OS.

1 Like
4

thanks a lot I will try and get back to you if necessary, I am using a second computer that already has a usb drive with ubuntu system installed I just want to make sure to get zcash files back…

5

how to do this backup?

6

If you have a bootable Ubuntu live image (on usb or cd / dvd) and it mounts your hard drive, you just need a storage device with a few gigabytes of available space. btw Ubuntu should reveal those hidden dot-folders when you press Ctrl-h.