Running Bitcoin Core on External Hard Drive

[assetdiversification]

Hey guys,

Let me start by saying I'm not so technical and I might not be using all of the proper terminology, but I hope you guys can help. I want to run of full node to claim my financial sovereignty!

Onto the issue...

So, I finally bought a 2TB external hard drive to use with my MacOS. I saved Bitcoin Core to external drive it and started downloading the block chain. My speed here is quite bad, so it took around 2 days to get to 33%. Then yesterday, I accidentally unplugged the hard drive without shutting down Bitcoin Core and it started the process all over and now I'm only at 7%. However, It appears that all of that data is still saved on my external drive.

Is there a way that I can continue the process from where I was previously? How can I prevent this from happening in the future? I would also like to be able to connect this external drive to my other macbook and run Bitcoin Core as well. How do I do this? When I connect it and try running bitcoin-qt on my other computer it says "Error: Cannot parse configuration file: specified data directory.... Users/LLLLLLL/LIbrary/Application Support/Bitcoin/'' does not exist..."

I did some research on my own and it seems I need to do something with the Datadir, and point it at my external hard drive so that bitcoin-qt always runs from there is my understanding? I found the Datadir in debug window on bitcoin-qt. It says /Volumes/Seagate Backup Plus Drive/bitcoin-0.17.1/Bitcoin Core

I'm unsure what to do. Hope someone can help me figure this out!!!

[LoyceV]

I'm not using MacOS, so my comments are not OS-specific.

What you want, is possible, but you should never unplug an external drive while it's in use. It corrupts data. If you can't prevent this from happening again, you should probably find a different solution.
Synchronizing Bitcoin Core (currently 220 GB) can easily take a few days on slow hardware, so that is to be expected when you're using an external drive.
You'll need to install Bitcoin Core on both systems, then point both configurations to the correct Datadir.
Make sure to backup your wallet.dat before funding it!

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

I'm not using MacOS, so my comments are not OS-specific.

I am also not a MacOS user but I think in general OP had folder path issue when he is using it in another device.

"Error: Cannot parse configuration file: specified data directory.... Users/LLLLLLL/LIbrary/Application Support/Bitcoin/'' does not exist..."

Since the files are in your external dive your patch path should be [drive-name]:\[the_folder_path]