Bitcoin Forum

My wallet screwed me over again i got an error msg on startup and asked if i wanted to re-index my file so i had no choice but to agree then the wallet got stuck so i was forced to delete the blockchain file now i'm back at waiting a week for the D/L YET AGAIN!

Where can i D/L a CLEAN virus free copy of the blockchain?

Thanks

The only way to be sure it's the correct blockchain is to download and verify it as you're doing currently.  That's also the fastest method.  If it's going slower than you'd like, and you know you have free ram, set the "dbcache" option in your conf file to a high number.  The number is the number of megabytes of RAM to use.  The default is 100.  So if you set it to like 3000 or higher if you have a lot of RAM, you can finish in a couple hours.  My rough guess based on average desktop CPU speeds is that 3000 = about 20 hours, and so 6000 would be 10 hours, 8000 would be 7 or 8 hours, etc.

delete whole blockchain

install fresh bitcoin qt

let it synchronize for a few days

when it's fully synchronized OK,
 - shutdown
 - backup your blocks/ , blocks/index/ , chainstate/ folders


when you get corrupt or need start bitcoin fast, just copy blocks index and chainstate back, and voila!!

Download It through qt. Qt has been optimized to download faster than a torrent when you're syncing.

Once youre finished, save a copy of your blocks so if your blockchain gets corrupted you don't have to download for another week.

As others recommend, backup the folder.  If you have the space, you might just want to git init the folder and make the backup that way.  That's what I do for my pruned node that I use as my wallet on my home computer.

I know the optimal way is downloading through the core client but its so slow. It would be could if we could have a way to securely download a copy from torrent that is verified with a hash or something like that, so oyu only have to wait for validating the blockchain which is pretty fast after 0.12 and will only get faster.

The download speed will not be the bottleneck, the validating will.  If you download as fast as possible from a torrent or whatever method you want, and then validate that download, you will be slower than you would have if you'd just ran Bitcoin and downloaded as you validated.  The validation is the bottleneck, not the download speed.  If it feels like it's going slow, then either your internet is slow (in which case, where you download it doesn't matter), or your computer CPU isn't very fast (in which case, where you download it doesn't matter), or you haven't allocated enough RAM to the dbcache option... which again, it doesn't matter where you've downloaded it from.

Downloading via the Bitcoin application is the fastest method.  I don't know how many times I can say that.  Would one more time help?  Downloading via the Bitcoin application is the fastest method.

If it's "going slow", either your computer or internet connection isn't up to snuff, or you need to tweak the settings in your bitcoin.conf file.  In particular, set the dbcache option as high as you can.

And lest we forget, I'll say it one more time:  Downloading via the Bitcoin application is the fastest method.