Bitcoin is abusing my harddrive

[scwizard]

When I run bitcoin, my harddrive will constantly click. I can't run the program because the clicking drives me batty.

[Garrett Burgwardt]

Good to know?

Odds are you are still downloading the block chain and once that is done it won't access your hard drive much more.

Regardless, a clicking hard drive is a bad sign. You might want to invest in a new one.

[TiagoTiago]

And backup your important data on another physical drive ASAP (google "click of death")

[SmokeTooMuch]

And backup your important data on another physical drive ASAP (google "click of death")

your wallet.dat for instance

[scwizard]

Good to know?

Odds are you are still downloading the block chain and once that is done it won't access your hard drive much more.

Regardless, a clicking hard drive is a bad sign. You might want to invest in a new one.

When I download something in firefox it doesn't click, so it's not a function of how much data is being written.

[casascius]

Good to know?

Odds are you are still downloading the block chain and once that is done it won't access your hard drive much more.

Regardless, a clicking hard drive is a bad sign. You might want to invest in a new one.

When I download something in firefox it doesn't click, so it's not a function of how much data is being written.

It could be that you have bad sectors that were allocated to Bitcoin-related files.  Bad sectors often cause clicking, and they could be assigned to any file, not just Bitcoin, just as a matter of probability.

I'd have to hear the clicking to know for sure.  But Bitcoin is not a hard-drive-intensive application.  I suggest backing up important files and at least running a diagnostic to make sure the hard drive isn't on its last leg.  (hard drives use forward error correction to silently recover from the beginnings of failure, then they offer a diagnostic feature called S.M.A.R.T. so you can catch the failure before the whole drive is ruined)

[Distribution]

I just lost a hard drive (RIP WD3200). Luckily there wasn't a lot on there (ironically, most of it was back up data from my main hard drive), but it sure taught me a lesson.

[TinkerToyTech]

I realize that a) the drives have s.m.a.r.t. and b) it may still be under warrentee but would this be a job for

GRC Corp's Spinrite ?  As BitCoin as just a uch an intellectual exercise as it is a real way to make virtual money

it was Spinrite that made everyone's BitCoins' worth a couple USD more.  Perhaps a little Supprt for the TWiT Network

Show and Steve Gibson's program?  You very well may have Spinrite in your tech support toolbox already, if you don't

I reccommend it for all spinning discos (drives not balls)

@TinkerToyTech on the twitter

@GRC GRC Corp on the twitter

@NoAgenda #inTHeMorning!

[kseistrup]

Odds are you are still downloading the block chain and once that is done it won't access your hard drive much more.

On Linux the file ~/.bitcoin/debug.log is constantly being appended to.  As I'm writing this message my desktop machine has an uptime of 1d 6h 33m, and the debug.log file — that (re)starts from zero lines at bitcoind invocation — contains 443'528 lines with a total of 16'109'442 bytes.  This means that bitcoind on average writes more than 8 KiB / 242 lines to disk every minute.

(And now we're at it: Is there a way I can prevent bitcoind from doing so?)

Cheers,

[kseistrup]

And now we're at it: Is there a way I can prevent bitcoind from [writing to ~/.bitcoin/debug.log]?

Code:

$ bitcoind stop
bitcoin server stopping
$ cd ~/.bitcoin
$ rm -f debug.log
$ ln -s /dev/null debug.log
$ bitcoind -server

Cheers,