Bitcoin Forum

I only ask because I noticed it's taken me an extremely long time to sync up to the network with 64bit bitcoin-qt, and yes I realize that the blockchain is 12+ gigs now but the last time I had to do this it took maybe half a day.

I'm at 2 years and 2 weeks synced.

The 64-bit version takes advantage of the larger address space on 64-bit computers so it should be slightly faster, but they're functionally identical. Downloading the blockchain has nothing to do with that, it just depends on your download speed and what nodes you are connected to.

Would appreciate dev answer on this. I'd be pretty surprised if there was any significant benefit outside (maybe) high-use servers.

I'm just wondering because I have a 7mbps down connection and I know that's not extremely fast but I should at least have most of the blockchain downloaded by now and I'm still above 2 years behind. I know in the past when I've done this or had to do this it was done within a day but I'm going on more than that.

You should search for a torrent of bootstrap.dat. The latest torrent is about 17 gigs and will get you with about 12 weeks of sync.

Pop it into your bitcoin-qt directory (I can't remember exactly which one, there are guides) and then delete it once you're fully synced to to free up 17 gigs.

Currently Bitcoin doesn't work like torrents where a file is broken into multiple pieces and you download these pieces from multiple peers. With Bitcoin you will download from a single peer. If that peer is slow than your download will be slow. You can try deleting peers.dat file and restarting your client, you might get lucky and connect to a faster peer. Or you can download the blockchain as a torrent (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145386.0). Also make sure your cpu and hdd are not the bottlenecks.

I did delete everything and restart it (aside from my wallet of course!) and it's still going, this time it isn't so slow. My ISP speed was part of the major problem but it's still about a year behind, but thank you for all the advice on this, I don't know what the heck is wrong this time that wasn't last time but it'll get there eventually I'm sure.

Seriously, download bootstrap.dat from here:

sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain/

It will get you closer to a full sync far quicker than using the client.

Just pop it into the relevant directory and start your client. It will do the rest seamlessly.

While it's syncing from file (which it says in the bottom corner if you're using the GUI) it also verifies the blocks using the network. So you don't have to worry about downloading a dodgy or corrupt bootstrap.dat.

Once it finishes syncing from file it will change to syncing from network to add the extra blocks since the torrent was released. Much faster than doing it from scratch.

If you download and install your blockchain to an SSD drive I've found that timeframe is reduced to an hour and a half.

Your peer's internet speed can also affect your syncing of the blocks. Your HDD write and read speed can also affect your syncing rate. Mine was synced within a few days on my HDD drive.

Part of the reason it's taking you so long is that your blockchain size estimate is seriously out of date.  As of several hours ago, the blockchain was 21.9 GB.  I run a full node basically just because I'd like to be able to run Armory, even though I don't most of the time.  But I don't envy you having to download the whole thing at its current size - I did that over a year ago when it was somewhere around 7 GB and it took me almost two days (at much slower internet speed than I have now).  I can't imagine doing it now at the current size of 3x as big as it was then. 

At the rate the blockchain is growing, if I decide to run Armory again, I'm going to need to get another hard drive, because Armory has its own copy of the blockchain.  It's a good thing I like bitcoin, otherwise I probably wouldn't bother.  Hopefully it won't be hard to toss the blockchain onto a seperate drive at that point.

The processing speed is quicker

It is definitely syncing way faster on my 64B machine.

Your issue is not the ISP speed bu thte download rate from the nodes. The data is stored on a P2P network and if the nodes you connected to only UL @ 50kbps (which is the default max in AUstralia in for ADSL2) then if you get 3 nodes you will only get a DL of 150kbps which is substantially short of the 7000kbps (7mbps) you ISP can do.

There is nothing you can do aside then wait and hope more nodes open up to you OR download a bootstrap (see other ppls comments) and wait for the delta to be downloaded.

This is just another reason why people should run a full time public wallet as a node.

Well it finally synced a few days ago, but it sure took a long time. I also added listen=1 to my bitcoin.conf I don't know if that helped or not, maybe it did who knows.

default is listen=1

I figured as much, I don't know if that just happens automatically but when I added it it seemed to sync quicker, and each time I restart bitcoin-qt it goes pretty quick.

Don't restart it too often.  I noticed it takes a while to shut down and if you restart too quickly you get corruption.