Recovery guide · Bitcoin · Retired
Armory: paper backups, encrypted wallets, old cold storage
Armory was the serious Bitcoiner's wallet from about 2012 onward — cold storage, fragmented paper backups, watching-only wallets on a hot machine. The software is barely maintained today, but everything Armory produced is still recoverable.
Don't try to "update" or "import" old Armory files into a new wallet without copying them first. The original format is unusual and a botched import can scramble derivation. Always work from copies.
What Armory backups look like
Armory used its own root-key format (not BIP39). Backups came as: a printed paper backup (two lines of human-readable codes), an encrypted .wallet file, or a SecurePrint / fragmented backup split across multiple sheets. Any one of these is enough on its own.
The clean cases
- Paper backup intact, no SecurePrint — we transcribe and restore directly.
- Encrypted .wallet file + remembered password — decrypt and sweep.
- SecurePrint paper backup + remembered SecurePrint code.
- All fragments of a fragmented backup, even if SecurePrint code is lost when N-of-N is recovered.
The hard cases
- One line of a two-line paper backup is missing or destroyed.
- Forgotten passphrase on an encrypted wallet — partial-memory recovery.
- Fragmented backup missing one shard.
- Old offline machine that won't boot — forensic key extraction.
Most of these are recoverable. Armory's key derivation is deterministic and well-documented; the work is targeted password search or scanning recovered storage for the root key blob. Funds never leave your control during the process.
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