Bitcoin Forum

Is there any way to speed up syncing time of the initial syncing of the blockchain? 

I.e. copy the chain from a source and tell the machine not to verify the transactions over 3 months old but merely check the blocks and hashes are correct. 

Only thoroughly check the last 3 months worth of transactions via regular p2p network seems far faster approach but are there any security risks with this? (If indeed it is even possible)

There is... you can download a bootstrap file if you are using bitcoin core. - https://bitcoin.org/bin/block-chain/ (https://bitcoin.org/bin/block-chain/)

or use an SPV wallet if its a client you are after - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4649/what-is-an-spv-client (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4649/what-is-an-spv-client)

Downloading the bootstrap is bad advice and is often slower than downloading the blockchain with bitcoin core (since v 0.10.0, iirc.)

Thanks for clarification (I have not used Bitcoin Core since before it was "core")

As an idea. you can find some nodes near you via https://blockchain.info/connected-nodes (https://blockchain.info/connected-nodes) and add them to bitcoin.conf

addnode=<nodeip>
addnode=<nodeip>

and you can up the maxconnections (not sure if this would work or just waste bandwidth)

maxconnections=<max>

info from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin#Sample_Bitcoin.conf (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin#Sample_Bitcoin.conf)

Better hardware and a good connection is the only answer to this, I'm afraid.

You can sync in another (faster) computer and then copy the blockchain folder over if that's of any help.

Better hardware is okay but good connection doesn't necessarily guarantee it will speed up the syncing process.The network itself could take time to download the entire blockchain regardless of the speed as the nodes would be busy with the verification instead of giving priority to feed blocks to your local drive.
.Took me 3-4 days with 50mbps of download speed.
@op you can try running this command if its stuck or taking too long to respond "repairwallet".

If you don't want to wait for sync you could switch to an SPV wallet like Multibit or Electrum.

It does increase the total connection count if the port 8333 is port forwarded, otherwise it does nothing.
Verifying a block only takes a minute or so on a very bad hardware and after verification, the nodes just feed other nodes the blocks if they want it. The download speed hasn't been a bottleneck; the hardware speed is more of a factor.

The good news is once you've managed to successfully download the blockchain the first time you don't have to go through the process all over again when you want to add additional nodes.

1.) Go buy yourself a 64gb USB stick
2.) Copy the blockchain to it (should be under %appdata%\Bitcoin\ most likely if running a windows box.
3.) Place in same subdir on the new node you wanna spin-up and load bitcoin-qt client

*Should only have to download and sync from the moment of last recorded block in your 'copied' chain till the present.

Correct. But I was simply referring to the fact that it's better to download with a 100MB connection than with a 1MB one... Or with an always up 10MB connection than with a lousy 100MB connection... :D