Mist: chaindata size exceeding 70gb and still going

[Fthku]

Hi,
Is there a solution for this ridiculously growing size of the chaindata? currently at 70gb and it's still rising as I'm trying to finalize a transaction (which is slow going..)

Basically, is there a way to reduce the size? if not, how do I move the current chaindata blocks as well as choose a new directory for future blocks to my HDD?

Thanks in advance, also I'd like to point out that I don't know that much about the app or coding in general, I just run it through the GUI so if I could get a step-by-step it'd be great.

Cheers!

[erelsgl]

I have a similar issue, although I could not even get to 70 gb since I had only about 10 gb free on my Ubuntu hard-drive. It got full and I could not continue so I had to erase the ~/.ethereum folder, which also erased my Ethereum account (luckily I did not have anything there). There must be a way to use Ethereum with less disk-space.

[luclu]

There are basically three ways to mitigate this issue:

• use a remote node like http://infura.io (this will be added in future versions)
• use a light-client node like geth --light (experimental and unstable as of now; ongoing work, see https://github.com/ethereum/mist/pull/1547)
• clean up the chaindata ("pruning"; not yet available in geth for existing chaindata, but the default when resyncing; --fast flag in geth)

Unfortunately this will leave you with only one practical solution for now:
As the latter option pointed out, remove the chaindata folder and do a complete resync (don't remove the keystore folder, though!).
This will require a full resync, but shrink the chaindata folder to about 14gb.

[Fthku]

Thanks for the reply @luclu but I'm afraid I'm not really sure how to do what you said.. How do I use the light-client node? or, how do I clean up the chaindata? (sounds better seeing as the geth light is unstable?)
I just basically delete everything in the chaindata, start ethereum wallet and let it work on its own?
Why would the size be reduced, however, if I'm doing the exact same thing?

Sorry for all the questions, total beginner here, trying to understand everything.

@erelsgl מסכים איתך בהחלט.. סיפור בעייתי.

[Hemalas]

same problem! any help?

[braco]

First time user on OSX

$ du -h ~/Library/Ethereum/
 47G    ~/Library/Ethereum/

Ate up all my remaining space.

@luclu this is expected behavior?

[Fthku]

@braco Not sure about OSX, but after deleting all the files in my chaindata folder on Windows and letting the program re-sync, it reduced the size greatly.

[AzzX]

Same issue.

Deleted and re-synced using geth --fast --cache=1024 brought it back to a more manageable size.

[evertonfraga]

@AzzX that is the current way to reduce DB size in geth.

For future references, see previous comment: https://github.com/ethereum/mist/issues/2242#issuecomment-301119047

[lock[bot]]

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