What is the fastest way to download the entire blockchain?

[johnyj]

The most resource intensive part is the verification of all historical transactions, this is especially painful if blocks increased to 2MB or 4MB in future. I guess in future if we have huge blocks, no one would be able to download and verify the blockchain enough fast, could take years. The only valid solution at that time would be download a clone of a whole disk image with a specific check sum

[letsplayagame]

why is there the need to download it, is it necessary to download blockchain for a user who isn't a miner?

If you run any full node software like Bitcoin Core, then it is necessary to download the entire thing because it is part of verifying every transaction and block. To verify all of those, the full history needs to be known.

This is a necessary inconvenience. The more full nodes we have the better.

[HITTI2]

https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/issues/846

A comment.

The block chain bootstrap torrent formerly hosted here will not speed up
downloading the block chain on Bitcoin Core 0.10.0 or later.  If you install
the most recent version of Bitcoin Core[1], it will sync itself as fast as
possible.

Also.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145386.msg11235170#msg11235170

[HITTI2]

The only valid solution at that time would be download a clone of a whole disk image with a specific check sum

Why bother with the blockchain then? If you want that security model, just trust the parties that give you that hash to tell you which transactions are confirmed.  Doing so would be much more efficient (and more secure against attacks other than the parties cheating).

Back to the original question, as other people mentioned-- the only actually slow part is verification. There isn't much you can do to speed that up right now except running a 0.12 pre-release.

Actually, if you have a powerful CPU than the average cpu and if the Bitcoin data directory is on an SSD, everything is much quicker.

Edit:
I've seen my two SSD's in raid0 get pegged utilization 100%. Same with my processor 100%. I've tested hdd vs ssd, man it takes forever on my hdd, ssd's pff blows hdd out of the water.

[helloeverybody]

It took me about 15 hours to download the whole blockchain from fresh just the other day, i didnt want to waste an ssd for it though so its just onto a hdd. Im not sure if thats fast or slow since the last time i downloaded it  it was far smaller. Thats with around 5.5mb download speed as in 55mb connection.

[astrocity1981]

I wanted a core client at my work and I think I installed  the core client from 2013 don't know what version. It took about a week to get 80 percent and I just stopped running it. The computer is old and still running xp don't know if its the computer or our internet speed. Back then I did not know much about the core clients and just got a blockchain wallet instead. What will increase the download speed the internet speed or a faster CPU?

[achow101]

I wanted a core client at my work and I think I installed  the core client from 2013 don't know what version. It took about a week to get 80 percent and I just stopped running it. The computer is old and still running xp don't know if its the computer or our internet speed. Back then I did not know much about the core clients and just got a blockchain wallet instead. What will increase the download speed the internet speed or a faster CPU?

Both. The internet speed makes the download faster, but it also depends on the peers. If their internet speed is slower than yours, there will be a bottleneck on them. However, CPU speed also matters since Bitcoin Core needs to index the blockchain and put it into databases. This is all on the RAM and CPU, so more RAM and a faster CPU makes this step a lot faster. Also a faster hard drive like an SSD speeds things up since it has to constantly write to the disk.