The only options it gave were Abort or Reload. Abort stopped the Bitcoin Core program. I tried rerunning the program a few times but it did the same thing. When I clicked reload it loaded up and has gone back to 0%.
Surely there is a better way. Has anyone tried sharing the data on external HD with people locally?
I've already had some experience with copied Bitcoin data directories. With my downloads speed (~20Mbit/s), it takes about 24-48 hours to download the entire blockchain, but when I just copy-paste the blocks and chainstate folder it only takes an average of 8 hours to duplicate it (I used cat-6 ethernet connection).
Once a new Bitcoin core installation is completed, I only run the Bitcoin-Qt for a few minutes to start sync, get a few blocks and just get bitcoin's data directory created, then I shut it down and deletes the blocks and chainstate folder in bitcoin's data directory. For the missing folders, I copy the blocks and chainstate folder from my other PC which runs a full node and paste it to bitcoin's data directory in a new node (laptop).
If you want to copy-paste the wallet.dat file too, you should start the bitcoin core with -rescan option, and when doing copy-paste things make sure the bitcoin core in both nodes has been shutdown.
Useful tips, thanks for sharing.