BitCoin-QT upgraded from < 0.8 to 0.8.1 Data Directory Q

[Kaega]

According to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory the blk*dat files in same directory as the wallet.dat are only for pre-0.8.0 and subsequent versions use the "blocks/" subdirectory.

Now that I'm at 0.8.1, why did the client leave both sets?

Is it safe to remove the ones in the base level (at same level as wallet.dat)?  The dat files are something around ~6GB and now I have essentially two copies.

[bitcoiner1]

Maybe the developers had a vision that with 0.8 a fork would happen and everyone had to switch back to 0.7 until 0.8.1 came out

If they would have deleted the files already, switching back would be more difficult. Maybe they delete them automatically with 0.9 or so.

[deepceleron]

You can remove blk0001.dat, blk0002.dat, blk0003.dat and blkindex.dat from the data directory after a reindex is complete and you are caught up with the blockchain (and you don't plan on going back to an older version). Only blkindex should actually be using disk space, as the old BLK000x data are moved upon upgrade, and the blk000x.dat files you see there are hardlinks (shortcuts) on any filesystem that supports hardlinking.

[Kaega]

Thanks deepceleron.