Installed Bitcoin Core with EXFAT Format SSD - MAC os - Have I F'ed up?

[JoopG]

Hello,

I downloaded Bitcoin Core with EXFAT Formatted SSD - I didn't even recognise the SSD has to be a APFS format as I just followed a Youtube video that the person just downloaded Bitcoin core to his External SSD with no mention of APFS Format.

I now see within guides that they mention that SSD has to be formatted to APFS or else there will be error.

Well I managed to download Bitcoin Core to my 2TB SSD with no faults as of yet and now looking to do the next step which is Ord Wallet however now have questions regarding do I keep going forward with my EXFAT format SSD or do I Format my SSD to APFS which would be erase of Bitcoin Core which took me 3 days to download.

What do i do?

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[Mia Chloe]

Synchronizing Bitcoin core isn't an easy thing and apart from the time it takes it also consumes a lot of space and requires nice amount of RAM to run properly.Now since you have already successfully synced the node there is no need to delete it. Although APFS has a better performance for Mac systems than exFAT , exFAT also has the windows+ Mac compatibility advantage . Also  you have nothing to worry about especially if you switch your drive between mac an windows Os.
Currently the hard drive you made use of is quite ok giving the fact that it is SSD , meaning it has a smoother running performance compared to HDD.

One of the main things it think you should be most concerned about now is the RAM of the computer. To properly run a node smoothly you should be making use of at least 8gb of RAM in addition to an SSD hard drive. Therefore I suggest you make sure your ram is good enough to continue running that node to prevent lagging issues from low RAM.

[JoopG]

Alright understood.

I do have a 16GB ram - M1 chip, so I should be alright hopefully.

Thank you

[ABCbits]

I now see within guides that they mention that SSD has to be formatted to APFS or else there will be error.

Well I managed to download Bitcoin Core to my 2TB SSD with no faults as of yet and now looking to do the next step which is Ord Wallet however now have questions regarding do I keep going forward with my EXFAT format SSD or do I Format my SSD to APFS which would be erase of Bitcoin Core which took me 3 days to download.

What do i do?

It's true there are few reports that using exFAT on Mac OS to run Bitcoin Core cause corruption, such as https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/28552. So personally i'd recommend you to reformat your SSD to APFS. But if you have another storage drive, you could move downloaded files (created by Bitcoin Core) to somewhere else temporarily, so you don't have to redownload everything.

[promise444c5]

Alright understood.

I do have a 16GB ram - M1 chip, so I should be alright hopefully.

Thank you

Formatting brings about  Empty , if you want to format  your  EXFAT to APFS your datas  will be completely  formatted , giving  you a blank new format of the hardrive.
Backup your data directory  to somewhere safe  not on the same harddrive now , a different  hard drive probably an external one.
It should  work for both bitcoin-qt and bitcoind, once you're  done with your formatting  download and reinstall  your bitcoin  core  replace the directory  data with the backed up data

Note:
To double check if there's  no error while copying  the data to the ext drive
Follow this step:
** After you complete the copying

• Rename your old directory  that was copied
• Navigate  to your AppData\Local\Bitcoin, create a new file "bitcoin.conf"
• in the file (bitcoin.conf) insert this
   

Code:

datadir=D:\Bitcoin (or whatever your new folder is called)

This path should  correlate to the backed up data directory.

• Now rerun  your bitcoin core once  again , if it works you are good to go , if not then you will have to delete the backed up data  recopy the renamed data directory to the ext drive again

This will prevent  you from resynchronising your bitcoin core again [/list]