Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Re: [Bitcoin Knots] porting an old wallet and 2 laptop airgap setup
by
nc50lc
on 08/09/2025, 05:13:26 UTC
Yeah but that means I have to redownload the blockchain and spend a ton of time again on this, on an old version which probably means even slower. And I would need a version that's older than the oldest one on that list, probably 0.8.6. And syncing the blockchain is so damn slow on my laptop, so I would need to leave my desktop syncing at night again.. what a nightmare.
I thought you only need to create an old non-HD wallet.dat to test if your plan will work?
Means, you'll just have to start old Bitcoin Core in testnet, generate a few addresses (send some tBTC4 although its testnet3), close it and get that "wallet.dat" file from the custom --datadir that you set.
There's no need to sync that old version, once you have your sample wallet.dat, use its copy in your intended setup (with the latest versions installed).

Then in your latest version, launch it in --testnet4, that wont take days to sync and it will not interfere with your mainnet files.
Also add walletcrosschain=1 to your bitcoin.conf file under [testnet4] tag for it to load the old testnet wallet.dat file.

That will enable you to test "Restore" and "Migrate" on a funded old wallet.dat file.