I downloaded the Armory zip under Win 10 recently and recreated my wallet from the paper backup. But Armory states me it is offline and doesn't do any effort to prepare the database or anything like this. So my question is, what else do I have to do?

Presumably both is true.
I don't use the wallet.dat from Bitcoin Core, but Bitcoin Armory. Right now I'm not motivated to try ist with the -dbcache parameter. I'll try as soon as I have to rebuild the blockchain.

This is exactly what I intended, but it doesn't seem to work. I made a backup of everything, I deleted the original data directory and afterwards I copied the backup of the chainstate folder (and only this) back to its original place. The result was that I had to redownload (rsync as you name it) the whole blockchain with consumption of all the time a complete download (and rebuild) requires.

So I need to backup everything, but in case of a failure I just need to recover the chainstate folder with the backup?

I suppose, it is right what you say about the chainstate folder. Would you please tell me, how long it takes to reconstruct the whole blockchain with just the chainstate folder?

Keeping just the chainstate folder seems not to be enough, becaus it seems to build up the whole blockchain from scratch if I delete all the files and folders except the chainstate folder.

We're living in a world where storage space is less an issue than time is.

The only reason for me to backup daily is that it tooks extremely long to download the last few 10,000 blocks again when I need to redownload the whole blockchain after an blockchain corruption. It happened at least once before. I even backup the backup every month, which I do manually.

Mayby I should proof the method with the chainstate folder though.

I use the Windows taskmanager to start automaticly backup the blockchain every I logon on with windows from my internal hdd to the external one. Afterwards Bitcoin Core starts automaticly too.

Here is how it goes:

• Download FreeFileSync and install it.
• Start it and select source hdd and destination hdd and for type "mirroring".
• Save as batch and note its location and name.
• Start the task scheduler and click on library on the left within it.
• Click on new task on the right.
• Go to trigger tab and click on new.
• Choose "with logon" and click on ok.
• Go to actions tab and click on new.
• Click on search and choos the FreeFileSync.exe
• Insert the noted location and name of the batchfile saved with FreeFileSync into the arguements field.
• Click Ok and and click new.
• Click on search and choose your Bitcon Core executable (bitcoin-qt.exe).
• Insert "-min -testnet=0 -regtest=0" into the arguments field.

• Click ok, go to options tab and uncheck "End task if execution is longer than ..."*

• Klick ok and ok again and exit the task scheduler.

*Note: I inserted the colored step later with an update of this guide.

Note: The first execution might take several hours.

This was really helpful. Thank you.
pebwindkraft, your post also gave me a clue how the process works. Thank you too.

Everyone writes something different here. This may also be due to the question. Let me rephrase the question. Related to the blockchain, which CPU speeds, internet speeds, and hard drive speeds match? How can I investigate the relationships?

What is the bottleneck in synchronizing the blockchain? Computational Power (CPU), Internet bandwidth or hard disk speed?

Thank you for all your replies. I'll try to run one. (And see if it works.) Unfortunatly raising the internet bandwidth isn't an option, becaus I'm living in Germany where wide areas are not very well connected.

Thank you for your replys. I did not understand everything you wrote. What, for example, is a VPS?

As far as I understand it, it is not useless to run a full node with such a low bandwidth and basically I do not need to make any special configurations to make it work without disturbing my surfing.

I have an internet bandwidth of 6 Mbps download and 768 Kbps upload. How should I configure a full node so that I can still surf?

Does it even make sense to operate a full node with such a low bandwidth? From which internet bandwidth does it make sense to operate a full node?

Damn, I possibly knew this once. Thank you.

Why ist it consuming that much CPU power? What the hack is it doing?! It's just a database to get processed, isn't it?

It would be much more helpful to see the number of the block currently processed, rather than its date. So you could estimate much better, how much of the total work of indexing the blocks is done, because the percentage of the program obviously is not useful. So you have to calculate it by yourself progressivly. Therefore the number would be helpful.

Yes, but it works fine for me, since I'm sitting behind a 6 MBit/s download connection. Or do I miss the point?

Excuse, droark, but this is not true at all!

Any hdd would do it. It doesn't have to do anything with being an SSD or not. Any regular sata-based hdd would to it too, even an external one connected via USB 2.0.

@whenwhatwherewhyhow: Do the following:
1. Delete the log files here:
C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\Roaming\Armory\armorylog.txt
C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\Roaming\Armory\dbLog.txt
([USER] has to be replaced with your username.)

2. Run Bitcoin Core. As soon as it is synced, run Armory.

3. Open the mentioned log files (that are automaticly created again) and post them here: http://nopaste.linux-dev.org/
... or here: https://pastebin.com/
... (one upload per file).

4. Provide both links to the uploads.

Then one of the experts will look over it.