2TB or 4TB drive upgrade?

[LoyceV]

fries the 8GB of maxed out ram on this laptop.

You can still run it: the IBD will take a while, but after it's done, 8 GB RAM and SSD is more than enough to process 6 new blocks per hour.

[nc50lc]

As far as pruning, I wouldn't trust any node that does not include the full blockchain. Having a backup saves a lot of time.

FYI, full nodes with pruned blockchain don't just download a specific number of latest blocks by trusting their peers.
It downloads and verifies all the blocks from genesis as it creates its databases.
The difference is only the pruning part after it's done with the old blocks.
So you don't have to trust it since it verifies everything like a full node with non-pruned blockchain.

Here's a reference: /index.php?topic=5229380.msg53938029#msg53938029

Maybe there's another compelling reason why you don't prefer it?

[ABCbits]

There are more expensive laptops with open source BIOS but these older machines are well known in it's operation and the foundation base for Libreboot/Coreboot and at some point they will become unusable.

Have you ever research or consider device that use RISC-V chip/processor? Some of them likely to have more open firmware/BIOS than modern x86/arm CPU. Bitcoin Core these days also support RISC-V.

BIP110 was right in it's idea but the fork is just dumb so it is what it is.

It's more dumb than you may expect considering are efficient ways to add arbitrary data without violate BIP 110.

https://mempool.kilombino.com/tx/9c34287f805e622b86ac140ef10475750214cf60c3310441b9b9ea9f429bb1bc?showFlow=false&showDetails=true still benefit from witness discount and ignore BIP 110 by creating lots of OP_PUSHDATA1 [<256 bytes arbitary data]. Note this website automatically flag if the TX violate BIP 110, for example https://mempool.kilombino.com/tx/090cd53a6e0304d95a3f3483f8d1994c07c54cbb6e559f22c7c716cb048ee822.

[takuma sato]

As far as pruning, I wouldn't trust any node that does not include the full blockchain. Having a backup saves a lot of time.

FYI, full nodes with pruned blockchain don't just download a specific number of latest blocks by trusting their peers.
It downloads and verifies all the blocks from genesis as it creates its databases.
The difference is only the pruning part after it's done with the old blocks.
So you don't have to trust it since it verifies everything like a full node with non-pruned blockchain.

Here's a reference: /index.php?topic=5229380.msg53938029#msg53938029

Maybe there's another compelling reason why you don't prefer it?

In my experience, more often than not you will require to verify the entire blockchain from scratch for some reason. I don't remember exactly why but sometimes I needed to do that and if you use pruned mode you are going to need to download the data from scratch. The process is much faster if you keep a local copy of the full blockchain. Plus it's just feels good to know all the stuff since genesis block is there sitting on your drive. Also the last time I installed Bitcoin Core/Knots I saw they are using a given hash by default with assumevalid enabled with is quite lame since it's incentivizing people into not downloading the entire blockchain which is creating a new subset of nodes that are not as safe. And for your own sanity you should max out all settings that give you maximum reassurance, that is disabling assumevalid and prune for a proper node. That's the whole point of Bitcoin. If people start skipping blocks it's kind of a joke.

[nc50lc]

Maybe there's another compelling reason why you don't prefer it?

In my experience, more often than not you will require to verify the entire blockchain from scratch for some reason. I don't remember exactly why but sometimes I needed to do that and if you use pruned mode you are going to need to download the data from scratch.

I see, so this is the main reason I assume (which is more reasonable than the previous)

And yeah that happens if you do something that's requiring to rescan the blockchain
like rescanning private keys past the pruned blocks or rebuilding databases with "--reindex/--reindex-chainstate" in case something is corrupted during improper shutdown.

[philipma1957]

Maybe there's another compelling reason why you don't prefer it?

In my experience, more often than not you will require to verify the entire blockchain from scratch for some reason. I don't remember exactly why but sometimes I needed to do that and if you use pruned mode you are going to need to download the data from scratch.

I see, so this is the main reason I assume (which is more reasonable than the previous)

And yeah that happens if you do something that's requiring to rescan the blockchain
like rescanning private keys past the pruned blocks or rebuilding databases with "--reindex/--reindex-chainstate" in case something is corrupted during improper shutdown.

At the moment I have a few chain copies.

I usually let them slip back a few weeks and restart them.

I don't  run them all at the same time.

But now that ssd's are serious money I can't justify having more than 3 copies.

Only because I happen to have been running 3 on and off before price got high.