Are you looking for a way to restore and recover your old Bitcoin funds from an old wallet?
The most important thing here is your recovery seed. This is typically your 12-word or 24-word seed phrase. As long as you still have them, you can get back your wallet funds anytime.
This article will guide you in restoring your cryptocurrency funds to your Trezor hardware wallet.
The way to do this will involve two (2) step processes;
- Factory Reset Your Trezor device (if you haven’t)
- Restore Your Bitcoin Wallet via Recovery Seed on Your Trezor device
How to Factory Reset (format) Your Trezor Device?
Before wiping your Trezor hardware wallet;
- Make sure you have your 12-word recovery seed with you.
- Make sure you do not have any funds inside your Trezor wallet, OR you can afford to reset and recover them since you have the 12-word recovery seed.
The recovery seed is given to you by your Trezor device when you set up the wallet for the first time. You are likely to write the 12-word sequence down on Trezor’s provided paper booklet, which can be found in the box when purchased. Always back up and keep the recovery seed safe and secure.
Connect Trezor to your Computer
Using the provided Micro-USB to USB cable from Trezor, connect your Trezor device to your computer.
You will be asked to provide your wallet PIN to access the Trezor wallet interface.
Open Trezor Suite app
Open the Trezor Suite app on your desktop. You could get it from Trezor’s official website if you did not install it.
Start Factory Reset Process
Inside Trezor Suite interface, click the <Settings> icon on the right-hand side, select the <Device> tab and click <Factory Reset>
You will be asked to confirm your decision on factory resetting your Trezor device (see image below). To continue, click on <Factory reset>.
At this point, your Trezor device will show the following message, and you need to long-press on the button that says <Hold to confirm> to begin the factory reset process.
Complete Factory Reset Process
The entire factory resetting process will take less than 30 seconds usually, and you will see the message from Trezor Suite that says <Device detected in incorrect state>
This means your Trezor device has been factory reset, and there is currently no firmware installed. This is because all data in the hardware wallet had been completely erased. You will need to install the latest firmware later on separately.
To restore your Bitcoin funds from an old wallet using Trezor, unplug the cable from your computer and plug it back in.
Read on the steps below to use your recovery phrase/seed on recovering your wallet using Trezor.
How to Restore Your Bitcoin funds using Recovery Seed on Trezor?
When you connect your newly-formatted (factory-reset) Trezor device to your Trezor Suite app, you will be asked if you want to create a new wallet or recover back an old wallet.
Choose Recover Wallet
Since we want to use our recovery seed to restore old wallet funds, we will choose <Recover wallet>.
Select Number of Words for your Recovery Seed
You are now in the Recovery Mode.
Press <Select>, and you will be asked to select the number of words for your recovery seed.
It will be either 12, 18, 20, 24 or 33 words, depending on your recovery seed configuration when you first set up your Trezor wallet device.
Key In your Recovery Seed
This is where you will key in all your recovery seed words on your Trezor device. Yes, on your Trezor hardware device.
Trezor recovery mode uses a T9 keyboard.
For example, if one of your recovery seeds is the word “boy”, you will have to;
- Press <abc> 2 times to get the alphabet “b”
- Press <mno> 3 times to get the alphabet “o”
- Press the <yz> 1 time to get the alphabet “y”
Wallet Successfully Restored Back
When you have keyed in all the correct recovery seed words into the Trezor hardware device, your cryptocurrency funds (if you have them) will be returned to your Trezor Suite interface.
That is all. You have now recovered your old wallet funds using your recovery seed on your Trezor hardware wallet.
