Transaction fee?

[sinkke]

Hello, I have a couple of questions:

I just transferred my first bitcoins from my wallet to someone elses address. I didn't realise that you need to set a transaction fee from the options BEFORE you do any transfering (I thought this would be automatical or that I would be given the option at some point). I now have 4.7 bitcoins just stuck there, unconfirmed. Will this transaction ever complete? It seems I can't even cancel it anymore to add a fee!

Also, I have my wallet folder (with all the 001, 002, DAT.. etc. files) on a truecrypt volume of 600 megs. I had bitcoin running for just a couple of minutes trying to figure that 4.7 transaction out, and meanwhile my old transaction from mtgox to wallet kept gathering "confirmations". Somewhere around 1300 confirmations windows and bitcoin told me that I'm running out of space, and the client just closed itself. How big does the volume actually have to be if 600 megs is not enough, and how do I stop it from gathering those confirmations if they take up so much space?

Thanks in advance.

[Bitsky]

From my understanding, not setting a fee just makes your transaction slower. Your transfer isn't lost or stuck, it should just take a while until you get it confirmed.

The bitcoin folder should be around 250MB right now with the complete blockchain. Also remember than until you don't have the entire chain, you won't get any confirmations. So leave it running until it's up to date. Right now, there are about 133996 blocks which need to be processed by your computer.

For a test, you can always transfer those Bitcoins to my address 

[sinkke]

250 megs? That's odd, I have a file called "blk0001.dat" that is already 300+ in size. And another one "blkindex.dat" sitting at 142 megs. Are these in the wrong place or something?

[Bitsky]

Sorry, my bad. I checked a backup directory.

The current one is close to 500MB (haven't updated today)

The backup is 11 days old. So blk0001.dat/blkindex.dat grew from 211MB to 459MB in just 11 days?

If that goes on, it will have a ridiculous size soon...

[sinkke]

Alright, just created a new volume with 3 gigs to be sure. Running fine now.  

I hope it doesn't take weeks for that one transaction though..  

Thanks for your help!

EDIT: And there it goes.. 7 confirmations. I guess I was freaking out over nothing. oops. 

[Stephen Gornick]

EDIT: And there it goes.. 7 confirmations. I guess I was freaking out over nothing. oops.  

For the benefit of anyone else who happens to view this thread.

The miners may accept a transaction fee even if it has no fee attached.

You can always check to see a queue that shows any transactions that have been announced to the network and the queue has seen but has not yet included in a block:
  - http://www.bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin

And once it is in a block, it will appear:
  - http://www.blockexplorer.com

After 6 confirmations, the client will change from unconfirmed to confirmed.

[JeroenV1990]

Ah, was looking for this, thanks for the answers