Well I do plan on keeping this Laptop for awhile.
So if you think it can be a viable dual drive setup I'll stay with it.
Should I just wipe off all the Bitcoin Core and Armory stuff and start over?
Or would you just recommend moving things around between the drives?
Perhaps a check list of some sort?
Once I have the wallet up I can access my coins and then can pay you for your time..............
I would say it was viable. My only minor concern is that the 1TB drive is 5400rpm (standard for laptops) rather than 7200rpm (expected for desktops). In my experience the difference in class
can make a substantial difference to performance and reliability, but you've also managed to sync the blockchain on it without any mention of it being a painfully slow process.
We'll probably want to wipe the other partial blockchain copy that I expect you have eating up storage on your SSD, but keep everything else installed as is.
Okay, a few things.
Armory by default is set up to automatically run a background version of bitcoin which downloads the blockchain for you. Smart, right? Unfortunately when things go wrong it isn't obvious where things have broken so we (or at least I do) tend to recommend that you opt for a more manual setup.
For day to day this basically means that you keep doing what you are doing now. You open Bitcoin Core, let it sync, keep it open once complete and then open Armory. Works for me, hopefully acceptable for you. I've had to get Armory to rescan and rebuild a few times in the past 2 years but nothing drastic and usually related to client upgrades.
Before that, we need:
- a configuration file to tell Armory where to look for the blockchain and where to store the Armory database
- another config file to make sure Bitcoin Core is looking in the same place and allows Armory access to the information it needs.
To do that I need some information from you on where things are stored and where they should be stored. I can give you correct config files and tell you where to place them. Nothing complicated, just text files.
You've mentioned that the HDD is the D: drive which is a good start.
- Where have you downloaded the blockchain to on D: ? If you don't know or you're not sure, the easiest way is to open up Bitcoin Core, then Window > Information. I need the value next to "Datadir" in this window. Should be "D:\yourpathhere"
- Where on D: do you want Armory to store its database?
- Where have you installed Bitcoin Core? (the program itself)
- Where have you installed Armory? (again, the program itself, you mentioned somewhere on D: too)
We'll also need to turn off the automatic bitcoind setting.