How to make space for new blocks?/How to recover BTC in limbo?

[InvestingEagle]

To make it short, I sent 0.27150092 BTC to a Bitcoin Core wallet https://blockexplorer.com/address/1AYWoK4wCkG9ZCHwbmNUs9D8NmAqqGLMoh not yet fully synced (38.71% as of writing). Supposedly, the BTC will not show up until all blocks up to July 26th, 2017 have rendered. However, I do not have enough space on my HDD (only 36 GB left as of writing). Can I make more room with additional storage devices, such as thumb drives? Is there a way to close the wallet with one PC and open it with another? I created a wallet.dat file. Can it recover Bitcoins if they have not yet synced with the wallet? I hear of a "pruning" method. Perhaps that would save space. All input is greatly appreciated. And yes, I am the new and dumb.

[1715151893]

1715151893

[1715151893]

1715151893

[1715151893]

1715151893

[achow101]

Use pruning. Go to the Bitcoin Core datadir (the path to which you can find by going to Help > Debug Window > Information and next the the "Datadir" label) and create a file named bitcoin.conf (just a text file, but without a .txt extension). Then add the following line to it:

Code:

prune=550

Restart Bitcoin Core and you should see that it is no longer taking up so much space.

[InvestingEagle]

I have taken your suggestion. If I were to delete all of the block files (blk00000.dat, blk00001.dat, blk00002, etc.) would the program start the block loading over, only consuming less space?

[achow101]

I have taken your suggestion. If I were to delete all of the block files (blk00000.dat, blk00001.dat, blk00002, etc.) would the program start the block loading over, only consuming less space?

No. Do not delete any files. That will corrupt the databases and require you to redownload and verify the entire blockchain.

Just set the line I told you to set and restart Core. It will do everything automatically. If it is not, then you have created the file incorrectly. In that case, make sure the file is just bitcoin.conf. Make sure there is no extension like .txt on the file. If you are using windows, you should enable the "Show File Extensions" option so you can see the entire filename.

[InvestingEagle]

I have taken your suggestion. If I were to delete all of the block files (blk00000.dat, blk00001.dat, blk00002, etc.) would the program start the block loading over, only consuming less space?

No. Do not delete any files. That will corrupt the databases and require you to redownload and verify the entire blockchain.

Just set the line I told you to set and restart Core. It will do everything automatically. If it is not, then you have created the file incorrectly. In that case, make sure the file is just bitcoin.conf. Make sure there is no extension like .txt on the file. If you are using windows, you should enable the "Show File Extensions" option so you can see the entire filename.

The .txt extension has been removed and my HDD is now up to 88.8 GB of space. Thank you for your help.