Storing the Blockchain on a USB Drive

I'm switching my notebook from Windows to Linux soon. Gonna start a Bitcoin node, but my SSD is too small for the whole blockchain. Moved my Bitcoin folder to a Sandisk USB stick and updated the links in Core. It worked fine for a day, but now I keep getting core errors that crash everything.

What kind of errors are you getting? Check that USB stick again. You never know... there are so many fake ones out there. I can’t see why it wouldn’t work; it’s just data. But I'd avoid putting chainstate on it since it writes a lot and could wear the stick out fast. Maybe create a normal.bitcoin folder on your home drive and symlink the blocks to the USB.

Yeah, especially if you're still on Windows. Bitcoin Core usually shows a specific error code when something's wrong. That makes it easier to troubleshoot. Also, where did you get that USB stick? Hope it’s legit! I've seen too many fake SanDisk sticks that fail after a while.

Thanks for the feedback. I’m not even checking the errors anymore because I’m upgrading my SSD and ditching Windows for Bodhi. Snagged one of the last drives on eBay. They gave me a good deal too, so I’m happy about that!

Cool, but does your setup have enough RAM? 8GB is pretty much the bare minimum for Bitcoin Core, honestly. You can run it with less, but it’ll be a pain with heavy disk activity. Have you thought about using Electrum instead? It’s a lighter wallet and better suited for low-resource situations.

Yeah, Sparrow Wallet is solid too. It has great features and if you decide to run a full node later, you can connect it easily to Sparrow for better privacy.

RAM is kinda an issue on both my machines. Can’t upgrade them since the RAM is soldered on. Thinking of trying Electrum, but I might need to read up on it first. Might be better for my netbook.

You’ve never used it? It’s super easy. Just go to the official Electrum site, download it, set up a wallet, save the seed phrase, and you’re good to go. For added security, create a wallet and restore from the seed to make sure it shows the same addresses.

Not exactly the same, but my Bitcoin Core runs on an external HDD connected via USB. Had issues twice in three years with the HDD getting corrupted, usually during shutdowns, oddly enough.

USB issues are a pain. Sometimes a little wiggle on the cable can cause disconnections and file corruption. It really depends on the cable quality.

I wrote about this before. You can run Core and store the blockchain on low-power hardware. But if you want to actually use it, idk if it’s worth it. You’ve spent money on a drive from eBay, so just be careful.

I did miss that part. But they say it's new and sealed, so if there’s any problem, it should be easy to return. Just hoping it doesn’t delay my project.

i5 with USB charging but less than 1GB RAM? How does that even happen?

That’s a classic mix-up. BIOS shows it as 8192MB, so no worries about chainstate now. Got the Hynix drive too, and it looks brand new. Almost bought both drives just to test.

You’ll end up writing several TB to sync Bitcoin Core, but hey, that’s less than 0.5% of what your NVMe can handle.

I checked, and that drive is 14 times faster than my laptop’s SSD. Definitely need to upgrade soon.

So far, so good! Was nervous when I opened the box; looked like the SSD was missing, but it was just sealed well. Finally got it fitted and recognized the 2TB. I wanted to upgrade today but all the cafes are closed.

Not sure what I missed, but Celeron chips don’t impress me. If you’re planning to run Bitcoin Core, you’ll struggle with that and limited RAM.

I’m using the i5 with the 2TB for a node, and the Celeron netbook for playing around with Lightning and Electrum.

That’s a tall order; Bitcoin Core is already pretty optimized. Gocoin has decent speed but loads UTXOs into RAM. Bitcoin Knots is just a tweak on Core.