Wallet.dat too big

[CoderZ]

Hi everyone , i`m having issues importing the wallet.dat into a new instance of Bitcoin Core. I`ts current size is ~1.5 GB and when i copy it to the %appdata% folder and start the Bitcoin Core GUI, it seems like it`s stuck at "Verifying wallet(s)". Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

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[LoyceV]

Just guessing here: are you running low on RAM?

[CoderZ]

No , my PC has 16 gigs of ram , Bitcoin Core takes about 2.5-3 atmost.

[rpstatic]

The wallet.dat has 1.5GB or the blockchain data?

If you want a new 'clean' wallet.dat file, you can use this approach.

1. Back up the current %appdata% bitcoin folder
2. Create a new empty bitcoin folder and put your wallet.dat inside
3. Go offline (or even better use an dedicated offline computer for this)
4. Start the qt wallet - it will start faster because it cannot validate your wallet dat
5. Use 'dumpwallet' to export your entire wallet with all private keys (caution: they will be saved unencrypted in a file)
6. Remove the current wallet.dat file from the folder
7. Restart the wallet (a new wallet.dat will be created)
8. Use 'importwallet' to import all the private keys from the file
9. Cleanup. Overwrite the dumped file and remove it

[HCP]

How "old" is that wallet? Is it from a old version of Bitcoin-Qt (ie. several years old) or is it from a relatively recent version? Given the file size (1.5 gig??!? ), it would appear that it's had a lot of use and contains a lot of private keys and/or transaction data.

One possible solution, is to make a backup of the wallet.dat... then start Bitcoin-Qt using the -zapwallettxes command line argument.

This will remove all the transaction data from the wallet file and hopefully allow it to verify the rest of the wallet data. Unfortunately, this will mean that you'll also need to do a rescan to allow Bitcoin-Qt to "re-find" all your transactions.

I've not done this with such a large wallet though, so ensure you have backups!

[nc50lc]

Even thousands of private keys wont make a wallet.dat file size grow to 1.5Gb, that's insane.
Are you sure that it is a wallet file? The file name is just wallet.dat or renamed? You're certain that it was your backup, or it was salvaged?

Because you see, there are other files that ends with ".dat" extension, if you just recovered it from a formatted disk or old hard disk, the chance that it's not a wallet.dat is high.
Loose Files from windows applications sometimes named with .dat extension, and a Gigabyte of generic file must be a part of an app.

[aleksej996]

Try running Bitcoin Core with "-upgradewallet" argument as well, since it appears it is an old wallet.
And as HCP suggested "-zapwallettxes" should reduce the size of the wallet since I doubt that those are private keys that make up that size, after that try restarting the app with a "-rescan" argument to get a correct balance.

It is pretty suspicious though, to have a wallet of that size. If those are wallet transactions that are taking up so much space, you alone would be responsible for 0.5% of the blockchain size.

[tokexchain]

Sound ominous that size-a-file, dump the private keys, maybe start afresh on a different system to see a difference in size, burn old wallet.dat after you have confirmed all TXs in newly created and synced wallet.dat.

[2tf]

Are you a miner or pool operator? is like the only reason to have that size.

[cellard]

Are you a miner or pool operator? is like the only reason to have that size.

I think not even the activity typically generated by miners or pool operators would amount to 1.5 GB of wallet.dat, that is just insane. Maybe the people conducting that "Large Bitcoin Collider" experiment have generated massive amounts of data worth of keys that could make for an heavy wallet file but I don't see it possible no matter how much generate or transact in any way possible out of the ordinary usages of Bitcoin.

None of the other .dat files should be anywhere near as big. My wallet.dat file is around 2MB and my peers.dat around 4MB.

[rpstatic]

@CoderZ
Did you manage to start your wallet with the file? I remembered there was a python tool to analyse and extract private keys from damaged wallet.dat files. I think it was this one https://github.com/jackjack-jj/pywallet. Maybe you want to give it a try.

But like many others already said, 1.5GB doesn't sound like a wallet.dat file, so I am not confident that this will work.