Perpetual Disk Space Low warning message

[deepskydiver]

I'm running the original bitcoin client with my wallet directory in an encrypted partition.
But whether I make that partition 100MB, 200 or 500MB the client eventually throws the Disk Space Low warning - and on acknowledging it exits.

Is this expected and should I be cleaning up files (aside from wallet.dat obviously) in the directory to stop the continuous creep?

[phillipsjk]

I find my Bitcoin Data directory hovers around a GB. This will probably get larger in the future.

Edit: now about 2 weeks later it is 2.7GB.

I agree the default client needs better wallet management.

New update (below): client uses about 100MB/day.

Answer: Don't forget to rotate your logs...

[deepskydiver]

Wow - OK, thanks.

I must have been reading an outdated guide. I wish they'd separate the wallet.dat file from the rest so the encrypted partition could be tiny.

[jaynyc]

resurfacing this thread again....  i am puzzled also.   is there a way to define a "cap" on the amount of disk space the bitcoin client will use?   is it just endless?

[bitcoinaddict]

Yeah I had this problem also when wanting to "tuck" some bitcoins away into a small wallet file and hide it away on a USB key.

If you just replace the wallet.dat file in the userdata folder, it won't show anything, you have to delete the block info, place the new wallet.dat in there and then wait for it to download the block data all over again.

It's a hassle, that's for sure, maybe in the future someone will make a client that doesn't require that for the wallet file but for now I just kind of work around it.

But at 1GB+ for a backup wallet now, I can't imagine how big that will be in 6 months or a year!

[phorensic]

resurfacing this thread again....  i am puzzled also.   is there a way to define a "cap" on the amount of disk space the bitcoin client will use?   is it just endless?

One of the proposed features for new versions is a way to download only the "headers" of the blockchain, instead of the entire thing.  But that is a ways off.

[phillipsjk]

My test-node running for 55 days ran out of disk space today consuming 5.8GB, or about 105 MB/day. If I subtract my the directory sarting size of about 1GB, I get about 90MB/day. If I subtract the first two weeks (2.7GB listed above) I get about 76MB/day.

These numbers were with versions 0.2.22 and 0.2.23 of the official client (using the -gen option). During peak times my node had about 125 connections.

Edit: Most of the disk space (4.2GB) turns out to be used by a file called 'debug.log'. This is likely because I was running the Beta version of the client: extra debugging information was being saved. That means block-chain house-keeping is only about 700MB.

Update: see answer in second post. (Log rotation)