So I've got this wallet.dat file from my old device, and I also have the password. The thing is, when I load it up in Bitcoin Core, I don't see all the stats I expect. It needs a ton of space on my computer to sync completely, and I can't manage that right now. Is there any way to check my balance without going through the whole syncing process?
You could make use of a block explorer like Blockchair or MEMPOOL.space . However the only problem is you would need to have one of the addresses. I suggest you check if you have any of the addresses to the wallet because if not you have no option but to resync with your dat file.
I would have suggested using your public keys but the will only display balance after syncing too so it's not much different from accessing the wallet normally.
You can set your Bitcoin core to pruned if you don't want to download the whole blockchain.
You can find it under settings> option and you should be able to see this below
Uploaded by BitMAxz
Enable the prune block storage to and set how much space you want; the minimum is 550MiB but you can set it to 1GB or 2GB like my setup.
For instant checking, get your BTC address from your receiving addresses. To find all of your addresses, you can find them on Window> Receiving addresses. Another screen will pop up, and you should be able to find your wallet addresses. Then right-click any address you want to check the balance of and use the block explorer suggested by Mia Chloe above.
Check the image below as a reference.
Uploaded By BitMaxz
If op literally doesn't want to take the risk or wish to not use the prune mode, he can still export the private key of his address on bitcoin core using the dump key command on the command console dumpprivkey<your address> and import to Electrum so he can access his funds..
Chances are your wallet already has the last known balance from when it was synced on your old device. If you didn't receive new transactions since then, it's still the same.
Note: if you have to ask those questions, I wouldn't start messing around with private keys! Just sync a pruned node (and be patient).
AFAIK, the prune only takes place once the entire block chain has been verified. It still needs to download all of the data before it prunes to the size specified.
Nope, Bitcoin Core performs pruning on the fly by removing the older blocks as new ones are verified. This means you dont need SSD/HDD of the size large enough to store the entire blockchain. With pruning enabled Bitcoin Core only keeps a recent subset of the blockchain data. This is why the storage requirements for node in the prune mode are reduced so significantly.
A full node also verifies new blocks on the fly adding the relevant data to its databases stored on SSD/HDD after the new transactions and blocks in RAM have been verified. BTW, you may skip the transactions download and subsequently their verification and force your node either pruned or full to verify only blocks while downloading blockchain. To do this just put the following entry into your bitcoin.conf file:
It depends on which definition you follow: some say a full node needs to have the full blockchain, some say all it has to do is verify all transactions in your wallet on it's own.
I like to think a full node has a copy of the full blockchain.
Didn't you initially said your wallet.dat already has already a wallet encryption password/passphrase set by you?
"Someone without a password" doesn't really make sense when you speak of wallet encryption passwords. Or I don't understand you, likely possible. (I think I get what you want to achieve.)
Encrypted Bitcoin Core wallets can be opened and synced without the encryption password/passphrase. As soon as some action is done which needs the private keys to be accessible aka decrypted, Bitcoin Core will demand the entry of the encryption password/passphrase. Such common actions are dumping the private keys or transfering coins from your wallet.
The safety of your coins depend on the complexity and resistance to guess or brute-force your encryption password/passphrase.