Bitcoin Wallet - 30GB later, still not sync'd

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Forums › Finance and wealth management › Bitcoin Wallet - 30GB later, still not sync'd

Dairyxox

1594 posts

Uber Geek

#123134 25-Jun-2013 19:46

Hi,

This is a bit of a rant, but i'd like to know if anyone else has this issue. After searching the net I've found some old (1 year+) posts about people complaining about 1.5GB and 3GB downloads.

Ive been a bitcoin user since 2011, but have been less active lately.

Last month I fired up the client/wallet software, and started the sync, after 24 hours it had used 10GB out of my 30GB plan, so i stopped the sync.

Planning ahead I upped my data plan to 60GB for the next (this) month.

Now my data has rolled over for the month, and I started to sync again two days ago. Im getting close to being synced, but when i checked my data usage, it has chewed up 30GB already. And now I'm getting pissy....

So in the last two months its eaten 40GB of data, and its still not synced. I'm not planning on keeping using this system as it is too inefficient for data usage.

I know there are online wallets that by-pass having to download all the block-chain, and I plan on moving to one of these shortly....but I'm dubious about their security.

Anyone else have any experience with this?
Does your wallet software eat up huge amounts of data?

DravidDavid

1907 posts

Uber Geek

#845347 26-Jun-2013 00:18

That is pretty insane! No wonder they are selling the DVDs with the data on it.

All advice I've gotten from bitcoin users across the globe is to only use your online wallet for trading with small temporary amounts inside. Online wallets can be compromised like every other data-base. Since it each coin is worth a hell of a lot of money, they are big targets too. In other words, they are worth the hacker's hassle.

jpoc

1043 posts

Uber Geek

#846422 27-Jun-2013 20:55

There are wallets that do not have to store the entire blockchain on the local device.

For example, Multibit.

Dairyxox

1594 posts

Uber Geek

#891310 7-Sep-2013 15:02

Thanks for your input. I tried Multibit and found it to work exactly like I need. Pity it's built on java :/

Though I'd also let you know through trial & error I came up with a way for the offical "QT" software to update the blockchain somewhat quicker too.

Updated to 0.8.4.0 and moved the appdata 'chainstate' folder (C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin) to a ramdisk (Free Radeon RAMDisk). This allowed me to catch up 15 weeks in about 4 hours.

This folder war really read heavy (could hear the mechanical HDD thrashing), in my case if made about 400MB of files 2-3MB each , it reads them intensively, and writes (lightly) the results to your blockchain copy.

This would be much faster on an SSD, but its a waste of space due to its size. Also all the activity can't be great for SSD wearing. So if you care about your hardware the ramdisk still helps.

greenbone

176 posts

Master Geek

#891990 9-Sep-2013 11:32

blockchain.info is regarded as a pretty good wallet. encrypted both ends so no access at the server side, and exports offline backups in .json format

if youre dealing with substantial amounts of bitcoin though, local client, with wallet.dat stored on encrypted media is the safest option. just not the most convenient

PaulBags

809 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#892396 9-Sep-2013 22:17

I'm not up on this whole bitcoin thing so this might be a silly question, but would it be possible for ISPs to zero rate the blockchain? Could they even act as another peer, speeding up propagation?

jpoc

1043 posts

Uber Geek

#892436 9-Sep-2013 23:17

PaulBags: I'm not up on this whole bitcoin thing so this might be a silly question, but would it be possible for ISPs to zero rate the blockchain? Could they even act as another peer, speeding up propagation?

Technically, yes that could be done but:

Would you trust your ISP to give you the real blockchain in real time?

Or, would you trust your government to allow your ISP to do that?

Or, would the Bitcoin community trust their governments?