You can get a headstart on block downloading.
Goto
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain/ , but read their warning:
WARNING:
Only use these data files IF YOU HAVE AN EMPTY (or no) WALLET.
While it "may" be fine to put these in with an existing wallet, and use the -rescan
option, the target audience here is new bitcoin installs with an empty wallet.
Who needs this?
- Any first-time user of bitcoin, who wishes to avoid the lengthy
block chain download through the p2p network.
Instructions:
- Unzip and copy blk*.dat files into your bitcoin data directory
- Remove any database/log* files from your bitcoin data directory
- Run bitcoin or bitcoind
What this does:
- Resets the bitcoin block database and block database index
to approximately block #120000 (give or take a few hundred).
- If you have a wallet with unprocessed transactions, the client
may not recognize them. Thus, the above warning: Only use these data files
IF YOU DO NOT ALREADY HAVE A WALLET.
Source: README.txt, updated 2011-04-28