My Bitcoin-QT blockchain died.

[soy]

I agree.  And since drive space isn't an issue, 2TB drive, next time it shuts down I'll restart without the -prune.  The prune switch seems to make no difference in network traffic judging by a glance at the debug network traffic.

I'm not certain, but I suspect that once you have pruning turned on, it may start over downloading from the beginning again if you turn it off (since those early blocks may already have been pruned).

No, it picked up where it left off, 2+ years to go.  So, the probability that the whole blockchain must first be downloaded before pruning starts is high.

I've torrent downloaded the blockchain before and built from that but it didn't seem any faster.

With only a month or two to go when it almost finished the other day, all those blocks, reindexing seems not to use those but downloads new or am I mistaken?

[1714639391]

1714639391

[1714639391]

1714639391

[soy]

I agree.  And since drive space isn't an issue, 2TB drive, next time it shuts down I'll restart without the -prune.  The prune switch seems to make no difference in network traffic judging by a glance at the debug network traffic.

I'm not certain, but I suspect that once you have pruning turned on, it may start over downloading from the beginning again if you turn it off (since those early blocks may already have been pruned).

Yes, I know for a fact that you will have to re-download the entire blockchain if you turn off pruning.

Well, turning pruning on didn't cause a restart.  I'll try stopping and starting without pruning now because if what you say is correct, I don't want to lose the blockchain at the end were I to go to no pruning then.  Although I can see that if one has already deleted a large part of the blockchain then yes, that would have to be downloaded with pruning off.

[soy]

I agree.  And since drive space isn't an issue, 2TB drive, next time it shuts down I'll restart without the -prune.  The prune switch seems to make no difference in network traffic judging by a glance at the debug network traffic.

I'm not certain, but I suspect that once you have pruning turned on, it may start over downloading from the beginning again if you turn it off (since those early blocks may already have been pruned).

Yes, I know for a fact that you will have to re-download the entire blockchain if you turn off pruning.

Well, turning pruning on didn't cause a restart.  I'll try stopping and starting without pruning now because if what you say is correct, I don't want to lose the blockchain at the end were I to go to no pruning then.  Although I can see that if one has already deleted a large part of the blockchain then yes, that would have to be downloaded with pruning off.

"You need to rebuild the database using -reindex to go back to unpruned mode.  Do you want to rebuild the block database now?"  So, from 1 year some months to go, it's back to 4+ years. ...my mistake, 8 years 10 weeks behind....

[soy]

So, I went back to unpruned mode, recrunching the whole 9 yards, and was quite far along on Thursday but it was raining.  So, I shut it down rather than chance a power outage.  Then I left it down until Monday, today, because I always back up my systems on Saturday and also that most failures have occurred on Fri, Sat or Sun.  Today I needed to do some shopping and started Bitcoin-QT before I left.  A cell passed through and when I came back in my systems were down.

I fired them up.  Starting Bitcoin-QT, it went through a check and then said Bitcoin Core not responding.  I just let it set.  Lo and behold, a few minutes later it opened and commenced processing blocks where it left off.  I'm happy.

I wonder.  The many times I've restarted from scratch this year, are there old blockchains abandoned and taking up space?

soy

[soy]

Okay, I've had the blockchain back for a week or so.  My Win7 machine has started locking up.  My C: drive is 2TB, backup on another drive.  I see I have used up most of C since starting to rebuild the blockchain with many restarts.  Are there duplicate blocks from earlier attempts that I may delete?