How To Recover Your Lost or Damaged Hardware Wallet

If you store your NFTs in a cold storage hardware wallet. It means you are a long-term holder and know how to keep your NFTs secure. But what if your wallet is lost or damaged? So In this post, we will discuss the topic how to recover your lost or damaged hardware wallet.

You can easily recover your NFTs and crypto if your hardware wallet is lost or stolen with your secret recovery phrase. The condition is you must have your secret recovery phrase. If you have lost your secret recovery phrase as well. There is no way to recover it.

To recover your stored NFTs and crypto, you will need another hardware and secret recovery phrase. Let’s deep dive into a step-by-step guide.

What is The First Step When Your Wallet is Lost, Stolen, or Damaged?

First of all do not panic, if your hardware wallet is lost, stolen, or damaged. You can easily recover your NFTs and crypto that were stored in your wallet. All you need is a new hardware wallet and your recovery phrase. Now you can transfer your digital assets to your new hardware wallet. 

If your wallet is damaged or broken, I suggest my readers, do not transfer them to the new wallet address because you can easily access them through the recovery phrase. However, if your wallet is lost or stolen, I suggest transferring your assets to the new wallet address. 

To do this we will need and new hardware wallet and set up our new wallet address first. Then we can transfer our NFTs to the new address. 

How Does the Recovery Phrase Work?

It is important for you to understand how does recovery phrase work. The recovery phrase works like a shield between your wallet address and users. No one can access the wallet address without this recovery phrase. The wallet address is the address of some specific blocks on the blockchain where your digital assets are stored. So your digital asset does not store in your wallet physically. Your wallet exists on the blockchain having your digital asset. This is the right concept to understand.

The recovery phrase is a randomly generated string of 12 to 24 words. No one can access your hardware wallet easily because they have to guess your password, pin, and secret phrase as well.

There are many hardware wallets available in the market for the cold storage of your digital asset. So, I will discuss how to recover your assets from the ledger and trezor hardware wallets. These are the two most popular hardware wallets.

How to Recover Your lost or Damaged Hardware Wallet Using a New Ledger Wallet?

You are required to have a new ledger wallet to follow this step-by-step guide. 

• Let’s start with resetting your live ledger. You can do this by simply opening your application and going into the setting option. After scrolling a bit you will find a “Reset” button.
• Now, plug in your new ledger hardware wallet and open the ledger live application. Click on the initialize as a new device. Ensure that you have a copy of your new recovery phrase stored offline by writing it down and storing it in a safe place.
• Take note of all of your new public addresses and copy them. You can do this by clicking on the receiving option for all of your crypto and copying the public key that appears. For all your assets to be sent to this new wallet, you will need these addresses in order to do so. 
• Your Ledger device needs to be reset. Select “Reset All” from the settings menu on the device. It is possible to reset your password after 3 failed attempts if you are unable to remember your password. 
• Now you have to reset the ledger live.
• Now you can recover your lost or damaged hardware wallet by using your secret recovery phrase. Select the “Restore device from recovery phrase” from the ledger live.
• You can access your NFTs and other digital assets following these steps.
• Now you can transfer your digital assets to your new wallet address. If your hardware wallet is just damaged, I don’t suggest you transfer your assets. But if you have lost your wallet it’s recommended to transfer your assets to your new wallet.
• After transferring your digital assets to your new ledger hardware wallet. Now reset your ledger live and ledger device as well.
• Now select again “Restore device from recovery phrase” but this time we will go with the new recovery phrase and import.

That’s all. Your digital assets from the lost or damaged hardware wallet are transferred to your new ledger hardware wallet.

How to recover your lost or damaged hardware wallet using a new Trezor wallet?

Now I will guide you step by step. How can you recover your digital assets using a trezor wallet from the lost or damaged wallet?

• Go to trezor official website and create a new account there.  
• If you are unable to find the public addresses. You can click on the receive button and it will show your all public addresses. 
• Now make a copy of all public addresses available. You can use a word document to make a copy of addresses.
• You need to wipe your trezor hardware wallet before you restore your assets. You can find the “wipe out” option in the advanced section. 
• Select the “recover wallet” option to recover using the lost wallet recovery phrase.
• Using your lost device’s recovery phrase, import it. All your digital assets can be accessed now from this new wallet. You don’t need to transfer your assets to your new hardware wallet if your old hardware wallet is just damaged. But it is recommended to transfer them if your wallet is lost.
• Now you can transfer all your assets to your public addresses that you have copied before making this restore.
• Recover the new device by wiping it and using its new recovery phrase.

That’s all. Your digital assets from the lost or damaged hardware wallet are transferred to your new trezor hardware wallet.

Conclusion:

By following the above-mentioned steps you can recover your NFTs and crypto from your lost or damaged hardware wallets. I want to add something here with this tutorial. Always buy hardware wallets from the official websites of these brands. It is not recommended to buy these wallets from amazon or from any other online seller. These wallets could be compromised. If you found this tutorial helpful or have any queries do not hesitate to ask in the comments.