Bitcoin Forum

Other => Beginners & Help => Topic started by: minerguy on May 30, 2012, 09:08:53 AM



Title: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: minerguy on May 30, 2012, 09:08:53 AM
Ok, I'm fairly new to Bitcoin and I have a question about the original Bitcoin client.
Is it normal that it takes days to initially download the blockchain when you first start the Bitcoin client.
The first 100000 Blocks downloaded fairly "quick" (took some hours though). But now I'm getting only about one or two blocks per minute?
Is this normal behaviour?
Btw. I'm using Windows XP, but my computer is fairly decent 4 Gigs of RAM and 3 Ghz Quadcore.
Thanks.


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: swissmate on May 30, 2012, 09:17:19 AM
Yep, it's normal


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: minerguy on May 30, 2012, 09:21:16 AM
Ok thanks, is there any explanation for this behaviour? Alternative Clients like multibit don't seem to have that problem.


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: Bitsky on May 30, 2012, 09:34:14 AM
The download itself wouldn't be the real issue here (for now), but what takes time is the verification of every transaction.
You could instead fetch a nightly snapshot of the blockchain and start your client with -rescan to get close to the current block count.

There's some more info on the forum about this:
eg https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84128.0
and of course my recent thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84177.0


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: Raoul Duke on May 30, 2012, 09:38:15 AM
There is no need to do -rescan anymore. It's done automatically if the blkindex.dat is missing or if you change the wallet.dat. Or at least that's what I was told ::)


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: minerguy on May 30, 2012, 09:49:51 AM
The download itself wouldn't be the real issue here (for now), but what takes time is the verification of every transaction.
You could instead fetch a nightly snapshot of the blockchain and start your client with -rescan to get close to the current block count.

There's some more info on the forum about this:
eg https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84128.0
and of course my recent thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84177.0

Thanks, I will try that, at the current speed it will take me weeks to download the whole blockchain :o


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: forsight on May 30, 2012, 10:40:21 AM
Shouldn't take that long, I can grab it in an hour or two if I have to download the entire chain. Maybe find someone who has uploaded a somewhat current chain somewhere and download it normally.


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: Gabi on May 30, 2012, 04:49:30 PM
C'mon guys, the problem is not the download speed

The problem is verifying the blocks. Check how much your hard disk is working, it's checking everything and it is the bottleneck.

On a SSD it would be much more faster


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: Faisal7 on May 30, 2012, 06:29:16 PM
this brings up another problem with bitcoin, it's too technical and that puts people off believe it or not.


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: deepceleron on May 30, 2012, 06:41:15 PM
Relevant thread:

Howto: New Bitcoin installation? Slow block downloading? Missing transactions? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51456.0)


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: casascius on May 30, 2012, 06:46:13 PM
Get a good headstart on the block chain here

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



Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: ludo0777 on May 30, 2012, 07:09:22 PM
Ok, I'm fairly new to Bitcoin and I have a question about the original Bitcoin client.
Is it normal that it takes days to initially download the blockchain when you first start the Bitcoin client.
The first 100000 Blocks downloaded fairly "quick" (took some hours though). But now I'm getting only about one or two blocks per minute?
Is this normal behaviour?
Btw. I'm using Windows XP, but my computer is fairly decent 4 Gigs of RAM and 3 Ghz Quadcore.
Thanks.

It does take ages, but it is worth it :)


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: nimda on May 30, 2012, 08:51:24 PM
For small amounts of BTC and an inexperienced user (perhaps the "put-off" users), an online wallet like the one provided by blockchain.info may be better. No downloading, no verifying, no wallet.dat stealers, accessible anywhere, and you can still send your large amounts to offline storage.


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: minerguy on May 31, 2012, 10:41:35 AM
Thanks again for all the help.


Title: Re: Original Bitcoin client is painfully slow
Post by: Faisal7 on June 01, 2012, 01:22:13 AM
For small amounts of BTC and an inexperienced user (perhaps the "put-off" users), an online wallet like the one provided by blockchain.info may be better. No downloading, no verifying, no wallet.dat stealers, accessible anywhere, and you can still send your large amounts to offline storage.

yeah I just created mine. now I'm more comfortable using these stupid fucking Bitcoins.