how to download whole database

[kopacb]

Hi there,

as a software developer I am trying to learn bitcoin internals. What is the fastest way to download the database? When I run Bitcoin Core it is going to take many weeks. I have throughput to download it faster, so this is not my bottleneck.

I found many pages in the internet regarding bootstrap.dat, but in some of them it was said that it is obsolete information and now there should be another format of the database or something like that, this is how I understood it, maybe incorrectly.

Thanks

[cr1776]

Hi there,

as a software developer I am trying to learn bitcoin internals. What is the fastest way to download the database? When I run Bitcoin Core it is going to take many weeks. I have throughput to download it faster, so this is not my bottleneck.

I found many pages in the internet regarding bootstrap.dat, but in some of them it was said that it is obsolete information and now there should be another format of the database or something like that, this is how I understood it, maybe incorrectly.

Thanks

The fastest way is almost always to let Bitcoin Core download the block chain.

[jackg]

Hi there,

as a software developer I am trying to learn bitcoin internals. What is the fastest way to download the database? When I run Bitcoin Core it is going to take many weeks. I have throughput to download it faster, so this is not my bottleneck.

I found many pages in the internet regarding bootstrap.dat, but in some of them it was said that it is obsolete information and now there should be another format of the database or something like that, this is how I understood it, maybe incorrectly.

Thanks

You might be able to find someone with a copy of the block chain. (I have the first 22GB if it's not the whole chain you're after). Otherwise, you'll have to wait for your computer to download the chain or to get a copy of the chain from someone else if it's not for the software you want to use it for. If it is for the bitcoin core software then it will be better to download the entire block chain and allow the core to run. If you have any other intensive processes running on your computer, cut them off first.

[RodeoX]

Assuming you mean the blockchain, you may also try "boot-strapping". That is downloading a copy of the blockchain outside of the wallet software. However, you must trust that download source. As mentioned above, core is your best bet. And it may not take as long as you think. It tends to download in spurts.

[kopacb]

OK, thanks guys, will try

[aplistir]

Hi there,

as a software developer I am trying to learn bitcoin internals. What is the fastest way to download the database? When I run Bitcoin Core it is going to take many weeks. I have throughput to download it faster, so this is not my bottleneck.

I found many pages in the internet regarding bootstrap.dat, but in some of them it was said that it is obsolete information and now there should be another format of the database or something like that, this is how I understood it, maybe incorrectly.

Thanks

The fastest way is almost always to let Bitcoin Core download the block chain.

Would be great, if there was an official pruned blockchain available for download.
The pruned version could be made for example from block 450000 and correctness could be verified with a hash sum.

The size of pruned blockchain is apparently about 8GB currently.

At some stage we will have to go that way or the blockchain will grow too big to be practical. 

[LoyceV]

I have throughput to download it faster, so this is not my bottleneck.

If you're using an old HDD, that's the bottleneck. Using an SSD is much faster.
Depending on your system, CPU power can also be a limitation. Check your system load to see what is limiting your download.

Would be great, if there was an official pruned blockchain available for download.
The pruned version could be made for example from block 450000 and correctness could be verified with a hash sum.

Who would you trust on this? You could end up on a side chain without knowing for sure. It would be quite easy to set up though, get a VPS and take a daily snapshot.
The beauty of running Bitcoin Core is not having to trust anyone else, if you don't want to download the full chain, why don't you use for example Electrum?

At some stage we will have to go that way or the blockchain will grow too big to be practical.  

I tested a pruned version to a ramdrive less than a year ago, it was mainly limited by my (not so modern) CPU speed, and took 24 hours. It was a lot faster than pruning to disk.

At current growth rate, disk space and network speed increases much faster than Bitcoin's blockchain grows.

[HCP]

The size of pruned blockchain is apparently about 8GB currently.

The size of a "pruned" blockchain is whatever the Node owner has set the "prune" size to be via the config/commandline... it has a minimum of 550 Megabytes... but you can prune to any size above that.

Ref: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.11.0/doc/release-notes.md#block-file-pruning

It should be noted, that even if you use "prune"... on a new node, you'll still end up downloading the full 140+gigs of blockchain so it can validate each block as it syncs... it is just that only the last X megabytes are actually stored on disk.