<p>Depends what you want to do. Remember, to use bitcoin you don't necessarily need a full-node. You can use many of the lightweight clients that exist out there which rely on Simplified Payment Verification (SPV). But if you want to be a full node (perhaps you're mining or you want to verify transactions yourself), then you need to download the entire blockchain which is almost 35GB large: <a href="https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size" rel="noreferrer">https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-05-21T07:52:36.810Z
Thanks. I need the full blockchain for my purposes. Weird that it is 35GB and mine is already 36GB and not yet fully downloaded.
user
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-05-21T08:07:35.397Z
@user on disk a few indexes are created in addition to just the blockchain data. Also depending on how you look at it, you might be comparing 1 GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes in one place to 1024*1024*1024 in another. You could consider running a pruning node, which is practically the same as a full node (including security), except it throws away some of the old history. Version 0.11 will make that possible.
Jannes
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-05-21T08:56:48.857Z
Yeah I guess that accounts for the small difference. In any way the answer is: yes, the blockchain is currently ~35GB, so I'll mark this answer as accepted. Thanks!
user
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-05-21T07:12:30.250Z
2015-05-21T07:12:30.250Z
Luca Matteis
<p>I want to install the bitcoind daemon on a computer with relatively little free space (about 35GB available). I thought that the blockchain was some 20 GB in size and figured that would be no problem, but I'm running into disk space issues. What I did was:</p>

<ul>
<li>First I tried the torrent file to bootstrap the blockchain. I downloaded the whole dat file and then tried importing, but on importing it I ran into disk issues. About half of it was imported before the disk was full. </li>
<li>I then removed the bootstrap file and let bitcoind load the blockchain from peers. I seems that it did use the half-imported bootstrap file so the first bit was quite fast.</li>
<li>However, I now have 36GB in the blocks directory, and my drive is full. Still not all is downloaded! </li>
</ul>

<p>My question is: </p>

<ul>
<li>Is the blockchain really this big?</li>
<li>Are there any files I could remove, given my particular way of going about this?</li>
</ul>

<p>I have a blk00001-00253, and rev00001-rev00253 in my blocks directory. Can I remove those rev files perhaps?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-05-21T08:00:12.173Z
Forget about the torrent file completely. It's slower and actually requires double the disk space while it's being processed (as you've discovered).
Jannes
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-05-22T13:08:19.907Z
The answer given is correct but I would add that you can also move the blockchain to external storage if you have a spare drive. You can specify the data directory like so: -datadir=<dir> on command line launch but there is no similar setting for the bitcoin.conf file so running bitcoind that way you might want to write a simple shell script to launch it for you.
Jay
<bitcoind><blockchain><storage-footprint>
Blockchain over 36GB and causing disk space issues
user
# Blockchain over 36GB and causing disk space issues

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-05-21)

I want to install the bitcoind daemon on a computer with relatively little free space (about 35GB available). I thought that the blockchain was some 20 GB in size and figured that would be no problem, but I'm running into disk space issues. What I did was:

* First I tried the torrent file to bootstrap the blockchain. I downloaded the whole dat file and then tried importing, but on importing it I ran into disk issues. About half of it was imported before the disk was full.
* I then removed the bootstrap file and let bitcoind load the blockchain from peers. I seems that it did use the half-imported bootstrap file so the first bit was quite fast.
* However, I now have 36GB in the blocks directory, and my drive is full. Still not all is downloaded!

My question is:

* Is the blockchain really this big?
* Are there any files I could remove, given my particular way of going about this?

I have a blk00001-00253, and rev00001-rev00253 in my blocks directory. Can I remove those rev files perhaps?

**Tags:** bitcoind, blockchain, storage-footprint

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Forget about the torrent file completely. It's slower and actually requires double the disk space while it's being processed (as you've discovered).  
> **username_2**: The answer given is correct but I would add that you can also move the blockchain to external storage if you have a spare drive. You can specify the data directory like so: -datadir=<dir> on command line launch but there is no similar setting for the bitcoin.conf file so running bitcoind that way you might want to write a simple shell script to launch it for you.  

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2015-05-21. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

Depends what you want to do. Remember, to use bitcoin you don't necessarily need a full-node. You can use many of the lightweight clients that exist out there which rely on Simplified Payment Verification (SPV). But if you want to be a full node (perhaps you're mining or you want to verify transactions yourself), then you need to download the entire blockchain which is almost 35GB large: <https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size>

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thanks. I need the full blockchain for my purposes. Weird that it is 35GB and mine is already 36GB and not yet fully downloaded.  
> **username_1**: @username_0 on disk a few indexes are created in addition to just the blockchain data. Also depending on how you look at it, you might be comparing 1 GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes in one place to 1024*1024*1024 in another. You could consider running a pruning node, which is practically the same as a full node (including security), except it throws away some of the old history. Version 0.11 will make that possible.  
> **username_0**: Yeah I guess that accounts for the small difference. In any way the answer is: yes, the blockchain is currently ~35GB, so I'll mark this answer as accepted. Thanks!  

---

