I’ve had a Daedalus wallet for about three years. I have not been able to access it for over six months and now it does not even begin to load and an error message pops up. There is over 500 ada on that wallet. Very frustrated and extremely disappointed.
Your ADA is not in the wallet its on the blockchain. The wallets holds your private keys so you can access your wallet. As long as you have your seed phrase, you can access your funds from another wallet.
What is the error message?
Daedalus is a full node Cardano wallet interface. To use Daedalus it requires you to download the whole blockchain to your computer, which is currently around 165GB, and verify the chain. As a result, Daedalus requires a lot of computer resources and it can be quite time consuming during the initial blockchain download and also every time you open Daedalus.
The main advantage of using Daedalus is so that you don’t have to rely on someone else providing the correct version of the blockchain data, which is the case when using a light wallet interface. However, there are now many reliable light wallet interfaces available, therefore there is no real need for everyday Cardano users to use Daedalus. You can find a list of them here:
https://cardano-community.github.io/support-faq/Wallets/list
Your wallet information is stored on the Cardano blockchain, the wallet interfaces listed in the above link are basically software interfaces that allow you to interact with your on-chain wallet. When you restore your wallet in a new wallet interface you will see your balance, staking preferences, unclaimed staking rewards, transaction history, etc.
To move to a new wallet interface you can simply install it then restore your wallet using your seed phrase, the list of words that were generated when you initially created your wallet. Please ensure that you keep your seed phrase safe and only download wallet interfaces from official links. If you are using a hardware wallet you can simply pair it to your new wallet interface. I would recommend choosing a wallet interface near the top of that list in the link above.
You can access a wallet in multiple different wallet interfaces across multiple devices at the same time.
It is highly recommended to use a hardware wallet for extra security. Please see the following link for more information: