Moving the Bitcoin folder from AppData

19

7

Bitcoin's taking a lot of space on my C drive, and I would like to move it to another drive. I've figured out to do it using symbolic links, but the problem is that my Bitcoin client is currently synchronizing with the network. Is there a way to pause it, so I can move the data and then go back to synchronizing?

My C drive's almost running out of space.

user1412

Posted 2012-05-24T02:16:08.243

Reputation:

Asking about how to change the default storage location has been posted many, many times. The future canonical question is probably Bitcoin-Qt setup: Change block-chain file location, settings? documentation?. Possible duplicate of Bitcoin-Qt setup: Change block-chain file location, settings? documentation?.

Peter Mortensen 2014-08-01T12:28:33.310

Answers

16

You can create a directory junction (as i did to move the BitCoin data folder), or you can specify a different data folder location:

BitCoin-qt.exe -datadir=d:\BitCoinData

Which will be the long-term solution.

Ian Boyd

Posted 2012-05-24T02:16:08.243

Reputation: 333

5

On Windows, the whole %appdata%\Bitcoin directory can be replaced with a symbolic directory link: Make sure the bitcoin client is not running.

Move the %appdata%\Bitcoin directory to its target location (e.g. d:\bitcoinData)

Run the command prompt as root and issue the command

mklink /d "c:\users\<your_user_name_here>\appdata\roaming\bitcoin" "d:\bitcoinData"

OR as answered by @lan Boyd

Simon K B

Posted 2012-05-24T02:16:08.243

Reputation: 151

In windows 8 the above syntax is not correct. You have to reverse it like this: mklink /d "D:\BitCoinData" "c:\users\&lt;your_user_name_here&gt;\appdata\roaming\bitcoin" – None – 2014-03-27T19:10:22.180

@ChadF As far as I can tell on 8.1 that's not correct.Drazisil 2014-04-24T23:32:05.963

3

Just shut the client down, move the files, and then start it up again. It will take about a minute or so to figure out where it left off, and then it will resume from there.

David Schwartz

Posted 2012-05-24T02:16:08.243

Reputation: 46 931

2

On Windows you will have to modify the BitCoin application's shortcut to add the datadir parameter, so that everytime you launch BitCoin it will always use the new data directory:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe" -datadir=d:\BitCoinData

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If you're using Armory to manage BitCoin, you need to set the location for the Bitcoin home directory. Go to File > Settings:

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stormwild

Posted 2012-05-24T02:16:08.243

Reputation: 121