Wallet on flash drive.

[Ymous]

Hello forum,
Today was frustrating. I am trying to get my wallet up and running, and I've been synchronizing for something like 10 hours now just trying to download all of the block chain, and it's still only at 65%. I'm in the red connection wise, not sure if there is anything I can do about it. I read up on why it's taking so long and I guess the block chain is close to a gigabyte in size, which is strange because I can dl torrents much faster.

Anyway, is it expected that the block chain to get much much larger? Can I expect to be up to 8 gigabytes in size someday? I am wondering if there is flash drive that would be best for this, or even an SD card. What does the forum recommend?

[plogank]

Normally you wouldn't need to keep the block chain on your flash drive just your wallet.  I have my stash wallet on an IronKey drive.  Works for me.

[Ymous]

How do I know if the port is forwarded?

[stabaho]

I use a coin from http://www.casascius.com/ as a Physical wallet.

[jake262144]

How do I know if the port is forwarded?

The client is able to establish those 7 or 8 connections, isn't it?
Don't worry about the port, it's just the current client being notoriously dead-slow.
Bitcoin client 5.2 is currently being tested and will achieve up to 40x faster download speeds.
Be sure to upgrade when the stable version is released.

[Gabi]

If you have only 8 connections (the default ones) then the port is NOT forwarded.

About getting the blockchain and comparing it to torrents: note how it work a lot on the hard disk, there are different bottle necks. The 5.2 client will fix some.

About the wallet: the wallet is NOT the blockchain.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Bitcoin uses port 8333 by default.

If port 8333 is not forwarded you are limited to 8 outbound connections.

You can check is it is open and properly forwarded in your router here:
http://www.canyouseeme.org/

As others have indicated the blockchain isn't data which needs to be kept secure.  There is no reason to put it on a flash drive.  You can put just the wallet.dat file on a flash drive.  Make sure you have a non-flash backup.  Flash drives are prone to sudden failure without warning.