Bitcoin Core - stuck reindexing?

[jakc]

Should start off by pointing out I am a fairly mid-level technical person, and a bit out of date with bitcoin.

I have only used one wallet, (Bitcoin Core 0.10, on a machine that rarely gets turned on, .dat file backed up) mainly for a number of purchases back around Jan 2014. When things were going south, I decided to setup an alert to let me know when I was back in the green. That day happened about a week ago. I want to now start to use some of this (several joints in Melbourne popped up that take BTC).

Turning this machine back on, I had a number of issues.
Firstly Bitcoin Core would not connect to any clients. The old 'no block source available' message.  
From looking at other posts, and trying a number of things, have upgraded to 0.12.1 and started a reindex on my database.

This reindex has been running for 26 hours in total.
It got to 2 years 3 weeks behind reindexing blocks on disk, and has been stuck on this for the last 10 hours.

From the debug window:

• I can see I am connected to 8 peers.
• Current # blocks: 301287 blocks
• Last block time: Sun May 18 09:37:41 2014
• 515mb recieved
• 21mb sent

Firewall is open, not using TOR, internet is a good connection.

What is the best steps to rectify this?
Can I shut my machine down mid-index, and it picks up where it left off when I boot up again?

I would like to move away from Bitcoin Core. Its taking up huge amounts of disk space (which I hear 0.12 can get around) but I have heard great things in another post about Electrum.  

Do I have to wait for Bitcoin Core to catch up syncing with the Blockchain before I can send any money?

I plan to download and install Electrum alongside Bitcoin Core. Send money from Bitcoin Core wallet to Electrum. Uninstall Bitcoin Core. Would there be any issues with this approach?

Really appreciate any help on this.  I will have to repeat the process for a friend at the weekend as well.

EDIT Have restarted Bitcoin Core - Verifies the blocks, but reports 'no block source available' and still stuck at 2 years and 3 weeks.

Log:

2016-06-08 09:02:08 net thread start
2016-06-08 09:02:08 init message: Done loading
2016-06-08 09:02:08 upnp thread start
2016-06-08 09:02:08 addcon thread start
2016-06-08 09:02:08 msghand thread start
2016-06-08 09:02:08 opencon thread start
2016-06-08 09:02:08 GUI: Platform customization: "windows"
2016-06-08 09:02:08 GUI: PaymentServer::LoadRootCAs: Loaded  53  root certificates
2016-06-08 09:02:16 No valid UPnP IGDs found
2016-06-08 09:02:16 upnp thread exit
2016-06-08 09:02:19 Loading addresses from DNS seeds (could take a while)
2016-06-08 09:02:22 110 addresses found from DNS seeds
2016-06-08 09:02:22 dnsseed thread exit
2016-06-08 09:02:52 receive version message: /Satoshi:0.11.2/: version 70002, blocks=415331, us=118.209.7.161:64103, peer=1
2016-06-08 09:03:06 receive version message: /Satoshi:0.11.2/: version 70002, blocks=158345, us=118.209.7.161:64114, peer=3

[achow101]

What is the best steps to rectify this?
Can I shut my machine down mid-index, and it picks up where it left off when I boot up again?

Yes. It will pick up from where it left off.

Having to continuously reindex is usually indicative of failing hardware. I suggest that you run some diagnostics on your hard drive to see if something is wrong.

If nothing is wrong, the best solution is to probably start from scratch. This means that you delete all of the blocks and databases and allow Bitcoin Core to fully sync from the beginning.

I would like to move away from Bitcoin Core. Its taking up huge amounts of disk space (which I hear 0.12 can get around) but I have heard great things in another post about Electrum. 

You can enable pruning by using the -prune option in the startup command. This will still have to download the entire blockchain but most of it will be deleted thus saving space.

Do I have to wait for Bitcoin Core to catch up syncing with the Blockchain before I can send any money?

Yes.

I plan to download and install Electrum alongside Bitcoin Core. Send money from Bitcoin Core wallet to Electrum. Uninstall Bitcoin Core. Would there be any issues with this approach?

No, but if you want it to happen quickly, you should probably export your private keys from Bitcoin Core and sweep them into Electrum.

Really appreciate any help on this.  I will have to repeat the process for a friend at the weekend as well.

EDIT Have restarted Bitcoin Core - Verifies the blocks, but reports 'no block source available' and still stuck at 2 years and 3 weeks.

Log:

2016-06-08 09:02:08 net thread start
2016-06-08 09:02:08 init message: Done loading
2016-06-08 09:02:08 upnp thread start
2016-06-08 09:02:08 addcon thread start
2016-06-08 09:02:08 msghand thread start
2016-06-08 09:02:08 opencon thread start
2016-06-08 09:02:08 GUI: Platform customization: "windows"
2016-06-08 09:02:08 GUI: PaymentServer::LoadRootCAs: Loaded  53  root certificates
2016-06-08 09:02:16 No valid UPnP IGDs found
2016-06-08 09:02:16 upnp thread exit
2016-06-08 09:02:19 Loading addresses from DNS seeds (could take a while)
2016-06-08 09:02:22 110 addresses found from DNS seeds
2016-06-08 09:02:22 dnsseed thread exit
2016-06-08 09:02:52 receive version message: /Satoshi:0.11.2/: version 70002, blocks=415331, us=118.209.7.161:64103, peer=1
2016-06-08 09:03:06 receive version message: /Satoshi:0.11.2/: version 70002, blocks=158345, us=118.209.7.161:64114, peer=3

Can you provide the FULL debug.log file?

[jakc]

Thanks! A lot of useful info there.  Interesting about the prune method.  Will also do some diagnostics on the SSD where the AppData folder sits.

I plan to download and install Electrum alongside Bitcoin Core. Send money from Bitcoin Core wallet to Electrum. Uninstall Bitcoin Core. Would there be any issues with this approach?

No, but if you want it to happen quickly, you should probably export your private keys from Bitcoin Core and sweep them into Electrum.

This is just what ive done this evening after doing some more reading.  As far as I can see, I now have the correct amount in Electrum.
Seeing as this machine is usually off majority of the time, would you concur that this is a good storage option for my BTC over Bitcoin Core?

Is there anything else I need to do in order to check the BTC are succesfuly in Electrum before uninstalling Bitcoin Core from the machine?  
It looks like Electrum does not download the blockchain, need to do some more reading around it.
I am in Australia, so only get 100GB a month download, so dont really fancy using up most my bandwidth on starting over, plus  if I want to access the BTC again in a few months, I will have to repeat the whole process.

[achow101]

This is just what ive done this evening after doing some more reading.  As far as I can see, I now have the correct amount in Electrum.
Seeing as this machine is usually off majority of the time, would you concur that this is a good storage option for my BTC over Bitcoin Core?

If that computer is off most of the time, then any desktop wallet would be safe. Electrum is a good choice and when you need to use the wallet, it will be very quick to start and be synced.

Is there anything else I need to do in order to check the BTC are succesfuly in Electrum before uninstalling Bitcoin Core from the machine?  

Nope, but it may be a good idea to hold onto your wallet.dat file anyways.

It looks like Electrum does not download the blockchain, need to do some more reading around it.

No, it does not download the blockchain. It is called an SPV wallet. Basically it means that it lets someone else download the blockchain and then it requests its data from that person. There is a little bit of trust involved as you need to trust that the server providing you the data is not malicious and will not give you bad data. This makes it only slightly less secure than a full node.

I am in Australia, so only get 100GB a month download, so dont really fancy using up most my bandwidth on starting over, plus  if I want to access the BTC again in a few months, I will have to repeat the whole process.

Right, that makes sense. Bitcoin Core eats up a ton of bandwidth anyways from normal operation.

[2c0de]

Never do reindex, just shut Bitcoin down and copy your blockchain /blocks/ chainstate/ from the backup.

It starts instantly.

[quicksilv3r]

Never do reindex, just shut Bitcoin down and copy your blockchain /blocks/ chainstate/ from the backup.

It starts instantly.

how can you do this? copy blockchain/blocks.chainstate/? u mean your wallet?