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The blkXXXXX.dat files in the new Bitcoin-Qt client (v0.8.1) are about 130MB each in size, while the old ones are about 1.9GB in size each. Does anyone know the motivation behind this change?
The change to the size of blockchain data files
Answers
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The reason is future pruning functionality.
Pruning will be implemented by simply deleting files (and related metadata in index databases) with only old blocks in them. Having smaller files means higher granularity in choosing what to keep or not.
The
blk*.datfiles should be around 10GB of total size. Are you sure your client is fully synced? – Steven Roose – 2013-05-22T19:40:10.013@StevenRoose My client is catching up. I see many blk*.dat files being created now. Each of them is 134.2MB in size. – Ning – 2013-05-22T19:53:33.707