Bitcoin Forum

I have been using coinbase but want to run bitcoin-qt but is there a way to run it in the terminal so it downloads quicker?

There isn't as far as I know , Bitcoin Core download the blockchain file like any other application that download so you can't increase speed of downloading unless you increase speed of your internet which is done from your ISP of course .
Latest version which is 0.11.0 should be quicker for what comes to the Synch with the network so use it (if you are not using it already) and be patient , it's a 40gb file .

Running it in the terminal will not make it download the blockchain any faster. The code is all the same. You should use the latest version of Bitcoin Core and leave it open until it finishes syncing. A faster internet speed and cpu will make it go faster of course.

My internet speed is at leaste a 50mb connection but i think my 5 year old 2.6GHz computer will be holding it back! I thought that less cpu will be used if i ran the program in the terminal without any Gui coding being run!

No. The cpu work is all for indexing the blocks. The most cpu is to index and process each block it receives and add it to the database.

You can download it as a Torrent. :)
And no, a 5 years old CPU migh seem old but mine is 5 years old too. Well it's a Xeon W3540 (same as an early core i7).
My laptop is 5 years old too (Thinkpad on Core2Duo, Linux Mint installed).

With the latest version of Bitcoin Core, the torrented bootstrap.dat is no longer faster. It is actually faster to let Bitcoin Core to sync through p2p than it is to download and use the bootstrap file.

Bitcoin Core version 0.10+ uses headers-first synchronization and it would allow them to download the blocks simultaneously from various peers. Internet speed isn't a major bottleneck here. The client has to individually verify the blocks to ensure that they are legitimate and the HDD speed would limit the I/O speed.

AFAIK, Bitcoin core 0.11.0 does not benefit Bitcoin Core much in terms of speed. Even though blockchain pruning is partially implemented, the process would still require you to download and verify all the blocks.

I have been using a SEAGATE EXPANSION 5TB hard drive but in 2.0 usb as my laptop has no external usb ports.

USB 2.0 maximum speed is around 60mbps depending on your internet connection and CPU speed, it is highly unlikely that it would be a bottleneck. Most CPUs aren't fast enough to verify a huge amount of blocks and even with parallel downloads, it would probably max out at around 10mb/s.