reindexing blockchain

[soy]

Had to migrate to a larger hard drive.  Did this not too long ago with another machine.  Seems prudent to have a backup.  Last time I had to rebuild the blockchain from a concatenated file of blocks from the other machine.  This time perhaps reindexing will suffice, time will tell.


I wonder if bitcoin-qt machinations while building or indexing the blockchain bear any resemblance to mining and if a way could be devised to dedicate a miner to rebuilding or reindexing then turning it over to the CPU so one could put the miner back to mining.

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[BookLover]

I've never heard of anything like this.  While it sounds cool I'm not sure how much it would really help the reindexing process as the main limitation is the hard drive speed.  An upgrade to SSD or RAID array is the way to go if you want to increase your reindex and sync speed.

[soy]

I've never heard of anything like this.  While it sounds cool I'm not sure how much it would really help the reindexing process as the main limitation is the hard drive speed.  An upgrade to SSD or RAID array is the way to go if you want to increase your reindex and sync speed.

Okay, thanks.  I thought it may have been a function of recalculating the blocks something like checking finished work as compared to running hashes on blocks for a more elegant solution and having almost all not best.

So, reindexing and syncing on a 3GHz machine compared to a 2GHz machine, both machines having identical drives the 3GHz won't finish appreciably faster than the 2GHz machine?  How about compared to an 800MHz RPI and that identical drive mounted via USB?

[BookLover]

For your situations I can not say for sure one way or another, I can simply say that in majority of cases

the main limitation is the hard drive speed

I said main limitatoin, not only limitation.  In the average computer the hard drive is the limiting factor, speed it up and you speed the sync speed.  You can, of course, get into situations where your hard drive speed is not the limiting factor. (I haven't yet)  

[DeathAndTaxes]

As for your situations I can not say for sure one way or another, I can simply say that in majority of cases

the main limitation is the hard drive speed

I said main limitatoin, not only limitation.  In the average computer the hard drive is the limiting factor, speed it up and you speed the sync speed.  You can, of course, get into situations where your hard drive speed is not the limiting factor. (I haven't yet)  

Exactly. Reindexing on a 3Ghz machine with 1GB of RAM and a 5400 RPM drive is going to be slower than reindexing on a 2 Ghz machine with 8 GM of RAM and a fast SDD.  A good CPU helps some especially on the more recent blocks (which are larger, and have more txs to validate) but someone looking for the best bang for their buck when upgrading a system should look at getting a good SSD.