Topic: How much space required for a fresh download of blockchain (Read 1823 times)

I'm downloading the blockchain since days.

During days, I need my notebook for work, and during night, I start Bitcoin-qt. I'm "only" 30 weeks behind, now, and I think I can manage to complete the download by next night, or max. the one after.
The "14-BLOCKCHAINS" folder contains blockchains of several coins I have local wallets for, and they're symlinks pointing to an external drive which is mounted on startup, so I don't clog my system drive.
I'm expecting some 45-50 GiByte when the sync is complete.

It really takes some time to download the full blockchain, and wallets like Electrum are a good alternative for those who just want a plain wallet with good security features. However, I am planning to do some coding which involves querying the blockchain, so I really have to download the full blockchain before I can start my work.

Well if you want to have the entire blockchain which is currently 40+ GB, you will need around 50-55 GB for the full database, which will continue to grow at
relatively high speeds as bitcoin becomes more and more popular. The blocks will inevitably rise at some point in the future.
I recommend using prune mode which was implemented in bitcoin core no earlier than last summer.
Currently pruning the blockchain disables you from using Core as a wallet.
In the future this problem will be solved, for now you can rely on an SPV client.

In the post-prune era of bitcoin, bandwidth and memory will be the main issues, in contrast with the past where Drive space was.

Bandiwdth is crusial in order for sync quickly and propagate the blocks more effeciently, while
the RAM is responsible for holding the UTXO set (Unspent Transaction Output Set), required to validate transactions.

Currently the UTXO set is steadily rising, the spikes are related to the recent 'bitcoin stress tests'.
http://statoshi.info/dashboard/db/unspent-transaction-output-set?from=1420021203077&to=1442139603333

You can see it is currently above 1 GB. Gavin Andersen observed that it roughly doubles every year.
At some point in the the future, 3 years from an 8 GB ram machine will not be able to even run the bitcoin core.
The truth is that point is even closer, as the RAM gets filled with other RAM hungry appications like the Browser and even the OS itself.
This is why I recommend at least 16 GB of RAM to be future proof.

So when considering the requirements to run a full node, RAM is more important.

Around 50 GB in HDD space is not a problem for everyone. But the bandwidth as well as download time still a problem with many country ISP. The ever growing block size might force new comer to use light weight wallets instead of Bitcoin-core.

Currently, Bitcoin Blockchain size is around 50GB+. The Blockchain could increase by as much as 144mb if all the blocks are filled like what happened in the previous large scale stress test. The block size increase could potentially up the increment even bigger. This isn't too big of an issue as long as pruning can be implemented. Try using SPV clients for now eg. Multibit, electrum.

Yes, use a light wallet such as multibit

Well I do, btw if you don't like to download the whole blockchain, why not try electrum, it takes up only 40 or so mb of space. Or is it for mining or something?

41.172MB
you must have unlimited bandwith guys

Thanks fellas, will try again today

The blockchain itself is over 40 Gb now. The extra databases required make up the next 10Gb and then you need space to expand into.

50gb is a lot of space,i thought it was more around 25

Here's also a nice chart about the blockchain size: https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size

You need 50+ Gb for the entire data directory which includes the blockchain. You should have a lot of extra space.

Hi

Had a problem with my wallet and its had to reindex the blockchain from scratch, keeps getting stuck around 9 weeks saying not enough space

How much hardrive space would I need as looks like I will need to buy a seperate Hardrive now

Thanks guys