If you’ve lost access to a crypto wallet because the computer or drive it lived on has failed, there’s an important distinction to understand — because it decides whether anyone can help. Recovering a wallet file from failed storage is genuine data recovery, and often very doable. Recovering a lost seed phrase or password is not data recovery at all, and no legitimate service can do it. Here’s the honest picture, and the scams to steer well clear of.
A crypto wallet has two parts: a wallet file or app, and the secret that unlocks it (a seed phrase or password). If a failed drive holds the file, recovery can get it back. If the seed or password itself is lost, the crypto is gone — and anyone promising otherwise is best avoided.
First, the lay of the land. A hardware wallet (a Ledger, Trezor and the like) is a small physical device that keeps your private keys offline; it’s protected by a PIN, and backed up by a seed phrase you were told to write down. A software wallet stores its keys in a file on your computer or phone — a wallet.dat, a keystore file, or an app’s data — usually protected by a password. Data recovery only ever touches one part of this: the files stored on failed media. It cannot reach inside a hardware wallet, and it can’t reproduce a secret that only ever existed in your memory or on a lost piece of paper. So whether we can help comes down to what you’ve actually lost.
Here’s the good news, and it’s a real and common case. If your wallet file, keystore, or a written backup of your seed lived on a hard drive, SSD or USB stick that has since failed — the computer won’t boot, the drive isn’t detected, the disk was reformatted or the file deleted — that’s ordinary data recovery. We recover the drive read-only, retrieve the wallet file, and you use it with the password you already have. People lose access this way far more often than they lose the secret itself: the wallet was on a laptop that died, or a drive that got wiped. A wallet file on a failed hard drive or SSD is a single-drive recovery from £300 +VAT.
Now the honest limit. If what you’ve lost is the secret — the seed phrase, the wallet password, or a hardware wallet’s PIN — then no data recovery, and no legitimate service of any kind, can retrieve it. These are deliberately protected by strong cryptography: a seed phrase can’t be reverse-engineered from the wallet, a good password can’t be brute-forced in any realistic timeframe, and a hardware wallet wipes itself after enough wrong PIN attempts. This is the intended behaviour that keeps your crypto safe from thieves — and it applies equally to you if the secret is genuinely gone. We’d rather tell you that plainly up front than take your money chasing the impossible.
Because so much value is locked behind lost secrets, an entire industry of “crypto recovery” scams has grown up around desperate owners — and they’re especially cruel because they often target people who’ve already been scammed or lost funds. The warning signs are consistent: a guarantee of success (no one can guarantee recovering a lost seed), a promise to retrieve stolen or scammed crypto (once it’s moved, it’s gone), a demand for an upfront fee, or a request for your seed phrase or remote access to your machine (which simply lets them steal what’s left). Never share your seed phrase with anyone. Legitimate data recovery deals with failed hardware and gives you a diagnosis first — if a service claims to reverse cryptography, walk away.
It depends what was lost. If your wallet file, keystore, or a written backup of your seed was on a drive or computer that failed, that is ordinary data recovery and often very doable, we recover the drive and the file, and you use your existing password. But if the seed phrase, wallet password, or hardware-wallet PIN itself is lost, no legitimate service can recover it, because those are protected by strong cryptography.
Very likely, if the wallet file was stored on the drive. A dead computer, an undetected drive, a reformatted disk or a deleted file are all standard data recovery, we recover the drive read-only and retrieve the wallet file. This is one of the commonest ways people lose access, and one of the most recoverable. A single-drive recovery is from 300 pounds plus VAT.
No. A seed phrase cannot be reverse-engineered from a wallet, a strong password cannot be brute-forced in any realistic time, and a hardware wallet wipes itself after repeated wrong PINs. This is deliberate, it is what protects your crypto from thieves, and it applies to you too if the secret is genuinely gone. Any service guaranteeing to recover a lost seed is a scam.
Watch for guarantees of success, promises to retrieve stolen or scammed crypto, demands for an upfront fee, and any request for your seed phrase or remote access to your device. Never share your seed phrase with anyone. Legitimate data recovery works on failed hardware and gives you a diagnosis first; if a service claims to reverse cryptography or recover moved funds, walk away.
No, and you should never give your seed phrase to anyone, including us. Data recovery works on the failed drive to retrieve the wallet file; unlocking that file with your password is something you do yourself, privately, once you have it back. Any request for your seed phrase or wallet password is a red flag for a scam.
If a dead drive or computer holds your wallet file, we can recover it read-only — you keep your seed and password to yourself. Free diagnostic, fixed quote first.