I am having a hard time with Bitcoin Core, and I'm thinking of firing it.

[TommyBitcoin]

I am a very non-technical person.  It took my computer- a MacBook Air  early 2014.  After installing Bitcoin Core earlier this year, I noticed that my computer started slowing down.  I keep getting a "your startup disk almost full" message.  I took it to the apple store and they showed me thru Daisy Disk app that Bitcoin Core is the cause of my computer's performance. It is taking up too much memory- out of my 120 GB, it is taking up over 88 GB.

I am willing to trash it.  I see no reason to keep it, if that is what is slowing my computer down.  I have a little pixie dust in it.  Other than anyone asking me to claim an address I used once in this forum, is there any consequence to getting rid of it?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[achow101]

What is slowing you down is not the fact that you are running out of disk space, but rather that Bitcoin Core is very CPU and RAM intensive.

You can remove Bitcoin Core, but only if you have no Bitcoin. If you do have Bitcoin, you should not remove Bitcoin Core until you move that Bitcoin to another wallet. I highly suggest that you use Electrum instead of Bitcoin Core.

If you remove Bitcoin Core, you need to be sure that you also delete everything inside the data directory, which is ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/. DO NOT DELETE THE WALLET.DAT file. That file contains your wallet. If you have any Bitcoin, you need that file in order to still access the Bitcoin and move it to Electrum. If you do not have Bitcoin, you can delete that file if you are absolutely sure that people will not send Bitcoin to any address in that wallet.

[DeathAngel]

I don't see any point in you continuing with the client if you only have a small amount of coins in your wallet. Just do as the post above me instructs. You could even use an online wallet like blockchain.info for small amounts, it's quick & easy with low maintenance provided you use a strong password & use 2FA.

[NorrisK]

For general use you are better of with a lite client.

You can export the private key in the core client and use the private key to import in your light wallet to have instant access to your dust. This will explain how to do it: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/7536/how-do-i-export-my-private-keys-from-my-bitcoin-qt-client

[Velkro]

What is slowing you down is not the fact that you are running out of disk space, but rather that Bitcoin Core is very CPU and RAM intensive.

You can remove Bitcoin Core, but only if you have no Bitcoin. If you do have Bitcoin, you should not remove Bitcoin Core until you move that Bitcoin to another wallet. I highly suggest that you use Electrum instead of Bitcoin Core.

This one, you should move your funds to another wallets like above Electrum or Multibit. They are so much faster for client-use and non technical person should use one of it.
Then you could use Bitcoin wallet app all the time without slowdown of your laptop.

[1 currency now]

I am a very non-technical person.  It took my computer- a MacBook Air  early 2014.  After installing Bitcoin Core earlier this year, I noticed that my computer started slowing down.  I keep getting a "your startup disk almost full" message.  I took it to the apple store and they showed me thru Daisy Disk app that Bitcoin Core is the cause of my computer's performance. It is taking up too much memory- out of my 120 GB, it is taking up over 88 GB.

I am willing to trash it.  I see no reason to keep it, if that is what is slowing my computer down.  I have a little pixie dust in it.  Other than anyone asking me to claim an address I used once in this forum, is there any consequence to getting rid of it?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

From what I remember, Bitcoin Core downloads the whole Blockchain data and takes a while to download because of that.

If you are using a laptop and planning to have Bitcoin Core on your computer 24/7 then you would want to make sure that you have enough data on your Hard Drive before downloading the Bitcoin Core software. I think the current Blockchain size is at (87.204 GB).
You could purchase a external hard drive (around 500 GB) so you could download the Blockchain data then move it to your hard drive, freeing up space on your computer. The Blockchain data is growing larger everyday so you might want to have that in mind when purchasing a external Hard Drive.

If you are using a Macintosh computer on the go and no wanting to use Bitcoin Core 24/7 then view your Bitcoin Core folder so you could copy the wallet.dat file and the passkey file (If you have a password for your Bitcoin wallet).

You could do this by typing this directory link in your address bar:

Code:

~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/

The size of the two files will not be that large so you could keep that on a USB that is under 4 GB real easily unless you have a bunch of transactions. 4 GB should be enough though.

With these two files backed up in your USB if someone sends you money then you could just load up the USB with another computer then open the "Wallet.dat" file and the "Passkey" file with another Bitcoin Core software then you should see your coins just sitting there along with the new money that arrived from the other person or people.

That is it.

My only additional advice to you is don't store a whole lot of your money on the computer.

[Kakmakr]

You are already using a pruned version of the Blockchain, and your hard drive is terribly small. Why are you even trying to run the client, with a small drive like that? You also mentioned that you only own a small amount of coins, so I would rather go for a online wallet or even just a Treazor hardware wallet, if you want more security and if you can afford it.

The Bitcoin Core client is very resource intensive, { RAM/CPU/Bandwidth/diskspace } and needs a little more than what you are offering with your Mac. ^hmmmmm^

[BitAurum]

I am willing to trash it.  I see no reason to keep it, if that is what is slowing my computer down.  I have a little pixie dust in it.  Other than anyone asking me to claim an address I used once in this forum, is there any consequence to getting rid of it?

If you backup your private keys properly before removing Bitcoin Core there won't be any consequences except the feeling that your no longer contributing to the bitcoin network.