Are there some recommended approaches for running Bitcoin Core on a laptop with constrained storage capacity? Is it possible to use an external hard drive as the data directory (datadir)? How does this setup work, and would I need to pay attention to?
Thank you in advance to everyone who responds to this question.
Thank you in advance to everyone who responds to this question.
Yes, it is not only possible but highly recommended setup as it makes a bit faster the sync and, at the same time, ease the burden of the drive that holds OS.
I would advocate for external SSD instead of HDD to not wait too long time for the initial synchronization completion .
Put down into bitcoin.conf the following entries
dbcache=
# where M equals to 1/4 RAM, for instance if you RAM = 8Gb then dbcache=2048
blocksonly=1
# this will increase the sync speed as it disables node listening and "stop requesting and relaying transactions unless they are part of the block". After full initial sync you may remove this entry.
datadir=
# For instance my path looks like this datadir=F:/ BitcoinData. Instead of BitcoinDta you can use any set of permissible characters you want
