# Restore old 2018/19 Wallet.dat with Zcash Node **URL:** \ **Category:** Zcash Apps\ **Created:** [December 12, 2024, 12:32pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701 "2024-12-12T12:32:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 12:32pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/1 "2024-12-12T12:32:32Z")
Hi guys, I’ve installed and fully synced a Zcash 6.0.0 Full Node on Ubuntu and am looking to hopefully recover funds from my old wallet.dat. The first problem I have is I can’t physically find a wallet.dat created by this node, but if I do ./src/zcash-cli getwalletinfo it shows me there is a 0.0000 balance and some details as if the wallet is there. I’ve done a file search and still can’t find a wallet.dat anywhere. There must be something I’ve not done?? Secondly, since I’ve been out the game a very long time (I just got busy and never wanted to extract any money out of Zcash) my wallet.dat I believe is from 2019 but the sheilded address I have in there starts with ZC which mean’s its an old Sprout key as far as I am aware. I tried to import the key into YWallet but it just comes up with an error, and I can’t find the address on any block explorer, which has me worried! I have 47 ZEC in that address so I’m really hoping it can recovered and I haven’t lost it all ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Shawn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/shawn/32/187_2.png) [@Shawn](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Shawn)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 12:36pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/2 "2024-12-12T12:36:13Z")
[%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Roaming\Zcash] I wrote this awhile ago, not sure if it its still accurate: > [@Help regaining access to funds from Zepio](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/help-regaining-access-to-funds-from-zepio/36186/38): > > Ok, for you to transfer a wallet.dat to a new PC that will fully sync: Find the wallet.dat file that has your funds on the old PC. It could be in a place like [%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Roaming\Zcash] Make a copy of it and re-name it to something other than wallet.dat like BACKUPwallet.dat , set it aside. Get the new Node on the new machine fully installed and let it sync to 100% Stop the now synced node. Find the location of the newly made wallet.dat on the new PC and rename it to NEWwallet.dat or … ---
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 12:38pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/3 "2024-12-12T12:38:07Z")
Thank you, yes this is how I did it before on the windows Node I had, but since this is now deprecated and I have Linux node, I cannot find the default wallet.dat that it has created to then replace with my old one. ---
**Author:** ![Shawn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/shawn/32/187_2.png) [@Shawn](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Shawn)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 12:40pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/4 "2024-12-12T12:40:54Z")
On Linux it should be in: `/home//.zcash/` ---
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 1:09pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/5 "2024-12-12T13:09:56Z")
It’s just not there, I cannot fathom why. ![ZEC](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/original/3X/e/a/ea25439613b0661ff4ea66bdc59a9915127f15c9.jpeg) ![ZEC2](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/original/3X/2/8/2878adaa0f304d4c472ffe29d17a8e786385667e.jpeg) ---
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 1:12pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/6 "2024-12-12T13:12:10Z")
In /home/user/zcash/src/wallet there are plenty of wallet files such as wallet.h and wallet.cpp but no wallet.dat ---
**Author:** ![james\_katz](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/james_katz/32/26780_2.png) [@james\_katz](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/james_katz)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 1:16pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/7 "2024-12-12T13:16:46Z")
> [@Shawn](#): > > `/home//.zcash/` is different from ```sh /home//zcash ``` The .zcash is a hidden directory. You may access it via the terminal with `cd` and use ` ls` to list the directory contents. ```sh cd ~/.zcash ls ``` ---
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 1:18pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/8 "2024-12-12T13:18:56Z")
Thank you James!!! I really appreciate you pointing that out, I wasn’t aware it was hidden! Okay guys I’m going to swap out the wallet.dat, wish me luck! ---
**Author:** ![str4d](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/str4d/32/64_2.png) [@str4d](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/str4d)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 1:22pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/9 "2024-12-12T13:22:50Z")
After shutting down your node and swapping out the `wallet.dat`, you will almost certainly need to start your node with the `-reindex` flag (to fix the wallet’s view of the network), which will take a while. (Once you’ve done that, if you shut down the node again then make sure to not keep the `-reindex` flag on the next start or it will start reindexing from scratch a second time.) ---
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 2:03pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/10 "2024-12-12T14:03:38Z")
Thank you very much guys! You’ve been a big help for this noob 😃 ---
**Author:** ![conradoplg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/conradoplg/32/42878_2.png) [@conradoplg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/conradoplg)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2024, 3:36pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/11 "2024-12-12T15:36:34Z")
Just to manage expectations, the syncing can take days to complete. But your funds should be safe. ---
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2024, 1:26pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/12 "2024-12-15T13:26:14Z")
Thank you, yes I was expecting it to take a few days. My first sync (before I transferred the wallet in) was just under 3 days, however now I’ve put the new wallet in and done -reindex, it seems to have stalled at 66% and be going very slowly (block height 18350000ish, downloading about 1 block per second which at this rate will take 600 days lol) which is frustrating, trying to diagnose now. ---
**Author:** ![Shawn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/shawn/32/187_2.png) [@Shawn](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Shawn)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2024, 1:41pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/13 "2024-12-15T13:41:49Z")
You are likely hitting the time of the spam attack, it will appear frozen but it is working. Unfortunately Zcashd sync is not multi threaded so you have to wait for it to crunch through. > [@Heavily increased transaction load since June 14](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/heavily-increased-transaction-load-since-june-14/42349): > > I find it strange there’s no serious discussion about this neither from users nor from protocol devs (could be that I massively overlooked some threads), but the chain has been seeing an increased load of transactions since June 14, resulting in huge blocks: daily average block size in the past 1 year (source: [https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/size-zec.html#1y](https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/size-zec.html#1y)) the only higher historical value was in April 2017, but that load wasn’t sustained for this long. taking a look at the r… ---
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2024, 1:42pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/14 "2024-12-15T13:42:33Z")
Thanks Shawn, it’s just weird how it didn’t seem to do this the first time, or maybe I just missed it, I’ll try to remain patient! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![dismad](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/dismad/32/18432_2.png) [@dismad](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/dismad)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2024, 3:56pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/15 "2024-12-15T15:56:32Z")
If you have enough memory, you can try the following: > With the default setting (450, units are MB), it took 6.5 hours to reach height 283k. With `dbcache` increased to 8000, it reached that height in 42 minutes. It’s always better to increase the `dbcache` setting if you’re not memory-constrained > > > \### TL;DR > > Enabling \`lightwalletd\` in the zcashd configuration causes the ini…tial sync to become almost impractical. It would probably be better for anyone needing this configuration to copy an existing data directory. (I do have such a copy, if anyone needs it and trusts me.) > > Also, set \`dbcache\` as large as possible when running IBD. > > \### Details: > > I lost my data directory and had to start \`zcashd\` syncing from scratch (IBD). Progress was extremely slow, like this would take weeks. The cause turned out to be that my \`zcashd\` configuration specified \`lightwalletd=1\`, which enables several indices. I suspect the same performance problem exists with the \`insightexplorer=1\` config option. This issue is to document what I saw. > > I observed that the adding of blocks (\`UpdateTip\` messages added to the log) would run fairly quickly, and then the \`zcashd\` process would pause for sometimes minutes, nothing seemed to be happening. Then the block download would resume and run normally for a while. These pauses make the overall progress extremely slow. I ran \`zcashd\` from the debugger (gdb), and interrupted it during one of these pauses, and the stack trace shows that one of the lightwalletd indices is being written (or \`txindex\`, which I had enabled too). This write (flush, actually) happens down within LevelDB, so I have no idea why it's taking so long. This single write can take minutes. During this time, \`cs\_main\` is held, which isn't a bug, but makes the node unresponsive to most RPCs, and you can also notice that the time since startup in the metrics display is frozen. > > This is a separate observation, but I also discovered that even without lightwalletd being enabled, the IBD is vastly faster with a larger (than default) \`dbcache\` setting. With the default setting (450, units are MB), it took 6.5 hours to reach height 283k. With \`dbcache\` increased to 8000, it reached that height in 42 minutes. It's always better to increase the \`dbcache\` setting if you're not memory-constrained, with or without enabled \`lightwalletd\`. > > I was curious if enabling indices on \`bitcoind\` caused this same degree of slowdown. Adding \`txindex\` to \`bitcoind\`'s configuration increased its reindex time by a factor of 3, so that's pretty significant. (Reindexing is a subset of IBD.) But it's still far less than the slowdown we see in \`zcashd\` when enabling \`lightwalletd\`. It could be because \`lightwalletd\` enables multiple indices, and they are written more often (for each transaction input and output, rather than just once per transaction as with \`txindex\`). Or maybe we're not writing to these indices in the most efficient way. Both \`zcashd\` and \`bitcoind\` are using the same release of LevelDB. > > I'm opening this as an issue because there may be ways to speed this up, for example (as mentioned) writing to LevelDB more efficiently, or upgrading our LevelDB version (if there have been any performance improvements). It might also be worth verifying that \`lightwalletd\` and the light wallets themselves need all of the indices that we're storing; perhaps some can be eliminated. example in zcash.conf: `dbcache=1024` ---
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2024, 4:48pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/16 "2024-12-15T16:48:49Z")
Ohhhh I will try that! Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2024, 7:10pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/17 "2024-12-16T19:10:53Z")
Okay guys I’m still at 66% downloaded 24 hours later, I think the issue might be bigger than we thought… ---
**Author:** ![dismad](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/dismad/32/18432_2.png) [@dismad](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/dismad)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2024, 7:16pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/18 "2024-12-16T19:16:09Z")
No issue, it takes time. Let it finish ---
**Author:** ![Autotunafish](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/autotunafish/32/7827_2.png) [@Autotunafish](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Autotunafish)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2024, 7:19pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/19 "2024-12-16T19:19:39Z")
Blocks 1.8 M to about 2.2M will be the slowest. It will get quite a bit faster again after then. ---
**Author:** ![Keydogg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/keydogg/32/5472_2.png) [@Keydogg](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/Keydogg)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2024, 7:30pm UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701/20 "2024-12-16T19:30:21Z")
Sorry to spam gents, I apologise if I’m being a nuisance but, when I did this the first time it was nothing like this. It’s just since I changed my wallet.dat file and did reindex. To not move even 1% in 24hrs seems crazy to me when it synced the full blockchain in 3 days the first time. It’s done 8,000 blocks in that time, to get to 2.2m it will be ~50 days at this pace. Unless it’s something to do with the addresses in my wallet being old (zc addresses)?? [Next page](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/restore-old-2018-19-wallet-dat-with-zcash-node/49701.md?page=2)