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Currently chaindata size is more then 10.02 GB.

  • Is there any solution to reduce the size of stored data?
  • Is there a way to store particular database and keep entirely the functionality of client (e.g. eth/geth) in this case?
Alex Koz.
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  • I think (if I remember correctly) that the fast partial synchronisation was originally in the architecture of the project. But I couldn't find any information about it. – Alex Koz. Mar 09 '16 at 07:46

2 Answers2

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There is state trie pruning in the works, which would be able to constantly delete old data that is not needed any more. Hand in hand with pruning is the fast sync, which sync to the network in such a way that it doesn't generate all the intermediate junk, but rather downloads the latest state from the get go.

Pruning is aimed to be included in Geth 1.5. Fast sync was supported for quite a few months now (--fast), so you could always delete your old data and resync with the chain from scratch to reduce its size. A fresh fast sync should be around 1.3GB in size at the moment. My machine + bandwidth can fast sync in about 25-30 minutes with the current algo, and there's an improvement going out in 1.5 which did it in 11 mins :)

Update

What is the fastest client with the newest features changes back and forth. Now Mist/Geth is the fastest with the new light client (--light), even faster than --fast

Richard Horrocks
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Péter Szilágyi
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    Thank you! As I know about --fast it possible only if db is empty ("blockchain not empty, fast sync disabled"). Is there any solution to reduce db (not entirely delete and resync) ? Maybe handy selective remove oldest parts of db? (But it's not beautiful :) ) – Alex Koz. Mar 09 '16 at 08:14
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    It's working as a prototype, but will only be rolled out in Geth 1.5 :) – Péter Szilágyi Mar 09 '16 at 08:37
  • This is not true anymore, is it? by currently using geth 1.6.1-unstable-d2fda73a I end up with a 16Gb chaindata folder, is this normal? – João Antunes Apr 22 '17 at 11:02
  • It's definitely not true, I am on latest geth stable and it's 64gbs – Adnan Aftab Oct 27 '17 at 13:39
  • Up to hundreds of GB now. :) – CivFan Oct 26 '21 at 03:36
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While Péter Szilágyi's answer is in no way wrong, there's also an other possibility. If you redownload the blockchain with Parity instead of geth, the size of the blockchain is reduced from your 10 GB to a mere 1.5 GB!

Jon Ramvi
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