Synchronizing with network - how long for you?

[Braincoin]

Just synched my bitcoin client to the network. It took 22+ hours. How long did it take for you?

[1714046270]

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[kokjo]

congratulations! to download the complete blockchain or blocks that was mined over night?

[underminer]

One thing you can do is copy the contents if the appdata folder and put them into your new appdata folder *if* you will be doing it again anytime soon on another machine.  (Or if you decide to format yours...)

[Arto]

I think it took about 7-8 hours for me the last time around.

[Braincoin]

congratulations! to download the complete blockchain or blocks that was mined over night?

Thanks! I believe it was most or all of the blockchain. I haven't synced fully in about a year. Originally it only took about 5 hours (last year).

One thing you can do is copy the contents if the appdata folder and put them into your new appdata folder *if* you will be doing it again anytime soon on another machine.  (Or if you decide to format yours...)

Hmmm, not sure what that means or what that would do, but thanks for the tip. I'm on a Mac.

[underminer]

It'll greatly reduce the download time is all.  I hate the waiting.

[AmDD]

Took 12 or more hours (I stopped watching it after 12 hrs) on a 50mb Internet connection a few weeks ago. I can just imagine what it will be like in a year or two...

[kokjo]

congratulations! to download the complete blockchain or blocks that was mined over night?

Thanks! I believe it was most or all of the blockchain. I haven't synced fully in about a year. Originally it only took about 5 hours (last year).

which version of the client are you using?
it takes only like 4-5 hours to download the whole chain, with a new version of bitcoin.

[Braincoin]

which version of the client are you using?
it takes only like 4-5 hours to download the whole chain, with a new version of bitcoin.

I'm using version 0.5.0.1-beta on a Mac. I just saw 0.7.0 is available. I hadn't even thought about that. Thanks. Does this mean I will have to download the entire block chain again? I hope not.

[mesquka]

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[BitcoinOxygen]

it took 2 day's for me to download the blockchain on a 25MB fiber connection's

but anyway you will only download the blockchain once..

[btcfaucet]

2 day's

[C10H15N]

Not real sure.  Only did it once and I let it run over night (10Mb).  It was finished when I came in the next morning.

[dangelus]

Took around 18 hours, but that was on a dire connection on a dire computer.

[panda1]

It took me around 30 hours on cable modem.

[jking]

I'm 30 minutes in.

So why does the client synchronize with the network in the first place?

I found this:

"The popular bitcoin client software from bitcoin.org implements a "full" bitcoin node: It can carry out all the duties of the bitcoin P2P system, it isn't simply a "client". One of the principles behind the operation of full bitcoin nodes is that they don't trust that the other participants have followed the rules of the bitcoin system. During synchronization the software is processing historical bitcoin transactions and making sure for itself that all of the rules of the system have been correctly followed."

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ

Does that mean that if I used a client that wasn't using "full" bitcoin node, I might somehow get a wrong version of the blockchain? Is synchronization to protect me or to protect the system?

[Xch4ng3]

The first time was about 8 hours all together. This was almost two years ago though, haven't had to do a full synch in a while.

[Haihai]

Last time for me was something like 10 hours.

[Gabi]

More or less 22 hours is normal today, unless you do this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=117982.0 wich mean in a hour or so you are ok.
And i heard about a new database system with future bitcoin client wich will make the downloading blocks thing much faster (in case you didn't notice, it took 22 hours because the hard disk was trashing like mad to verify every block, a better database would allow the computer to do that much much quicker!)

Oh or you can use a lightweight client like Electrum or Armory 

[Arto]

And i heard about a new database system with future bitcoin client wich will make the downloading blocks thing much faster (in case you didn't notice, it took 22 hours because the hard disk was trashing like mad to verify every block, a better database would allow the computer to do that much much quicker!)

Yes, that's indeed upcoming. Here's what one of the core developers said recently:

I've also spent more than a few weeks time already on rewriting the reference client's validation engine to be much more efficient. Without any compensation, by the way. I understand the decreasing performance is rapidly becoming an issue, and not seeing improvement must be frustrating. But please don't think we're ignorant. I'm not alone, of course. Mike helped by making Bitcoin run on top of LevelDB (instead of ancient BDB), which has much better performance, in particular on slow disks.

All this is finished and works. It just requires a massive amount of testing - we can't just switch to some faster code and hope that it behaves the same way. Even if it deviates from the old one in the tiniest way, we have a serious problem. This will take time to merge, and time is critical now. We're also just volunteers.

Anyway, expect 0.8 to be significantly faster than 0.7. I'm not talking about a few percent improvement. How much improvement will depend on a lot of factors, but I've done test runs (in idealized conditions) with full syncs in less than half an hour. In practice for most it will probably still be hours, but it shouldn't be days anymore.