Hey everyone
Just set up a new Bitcoin node and the initial block download is crawling (using v27). It connects to a few peers, grabs around 100 MB, then disconnects from all of them, only to reconnect to different ones after a few hours.
No issues with my connection, but I feel like I might be missing something in my setup. I’m using a new MacBook Pro hooked up to gigabit ethernet, and I’m storing the blocks on a 5 TB external hard drive (Winchester black) through USBC. Just to note, that hard drive isn’t an SSD.
Would really appreciate any advice since I'm a bit of a newbie here.
Thanks, everyone!
Just the blocks (--blocksdir) or the entire data directory?
If the latter, that is your bottleneck,
If the former and the internal drive is an SSD: set your database cache (dbcache) higher depending on your available RAM, but don't let Bitcoin Core use all.
I'd recommended to set that regardless of the datadir's location because the default is too low for your hardware.
Peers disconnecting after a certain period seems normal but if consistent, there may be something forcing disconnection.
This sounds like your Firewall/AV software blocking connection to your peers after a certain period.
Try to add Bitcoin Core as an exception.
@nc50lc already provide good answer. But i checked https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/ and found out cheapest one only have 8GB RAM. So at some point (blocks created during 2023), IBD process will be much slower due if you happen to use Macbook Pro with only 8GB of RAM.
Having the whole datadir on the slow HDD will be a pain and later slow process when the UTXO set in chainstate directory grows bigger than your available RAM for Core. You can mitigate it partly if you leave the datadir on the internal SSD and symlink the blocks folder to an appropriate folder on the external HDD. That way the folders indexes and chainstate benefit from access speed of the SSD while the approx. 611GB needed space for folder blocks can grow on the slower HDD.
You can also specify explicitly the location of your blocks storage in the bitcoin.conf file (no symlinking necessary), see below and merge it with your own settings there. It is by no means complete, I just added what will speed up your initial block download.
Of course you need to adjust the path for the blocksdir=<...> and replace <...> with the actual path to the external folder.
New Pros don't have a gigabit ethernet port are you using an adapter? If so is it a 'name brand' or a $9.99 one from Amazon?
Are you running anything else while downloading or is anything else accessing the external drive?
If you go to https://bitnodes.io/#join-the-network do you see your public IP?
-Dave