how is a backup of the blockchain done?

[rocketron]

hi all,

I am just wondering what is the way to go about backing up the blockchain?

everything has been going great for me until i upgraded to 0.8.5

prior to my upgrade I backed up the whole bitcoin folder in the hidden \appdata directory, uninstalled 0.8.1, installed 0.8.5 and then copied over all the files that i had backed up over, i then used the -rescan command.

bitcoin=qt loaded up but my blockchain is 9 days out of date, so i leave it running only to come back and see it still stuck on 9 days sync, its processing about 1 block every 1-2 mins, I initially thought what the hell something up there so i went through the whole checking firewalls,connections to nodes etc, everything checks out ok.

so i think then maybe its just the network so i leave it running for a few more hours, still wont sync, or at the best at a horrendus speed of 3 every 5 mins.

i then deleted everything in the \appdata and let bitcoin create everything again, blockchain is now downloading at the speed it should be processing about 1000\min.

so I would like to hear from others how they backup the chain and restore it when a new version of bitcoin-qt comes out.

does the blockchain have to be re-downloaded in full at every version change which you cant use any sort of previous backup of it ?

thanks

[Sukrim]

Recent blocks are far larger and contain more transactions than the early ones, your client will likely crawl back to this slow speed over time.

[rocketron]

Recent blocks are far larger and contain more transactions than the early ones, your client will likely crawl back to this slow speed over time.

thanks for reply. I managed to get the backup i done working and synced in 5 mins, I deleted the peers.dat and debug.log as per advice from another member.

thanks