Hey everyone who’s run a bitcoin node, have any of you dealt with super slow downloads even though your internet speed is solid?
When I try to download anything else, I get over 70Mbps, but downloading the Bitcoin node feels like it’s crawling. It’s like it’s gonna take forever to finish.
Also, can I grab Bitcoin node files from somewhere else and just load them up? Like transferring the node files and getting it to work? Is that even a thing?
Downloading is not the bottleneck. Verification is. How much RAM do you have, and do you use HDD drive or SSD? If you're syncing on an HDD, it will take many days, even weeks.
Don't ever do that. Theoretically you can download the blockchain from elsewhere, but it comes with risks with absolutely no upside. Bitcoin Core initial block download taking a long time is the problem that needs to be fixed.
Hope you are using ssd and not hdd, it may contribute.
If you have big ram up to 4gb, increase your Dbcache to 2000 or higher and restart the node. Check your inbound connections too, sometimes they disconnect if your internet lag and your download maybe slow with few peers.
70mbps looks big but is not megabyte per second, it's megabits but this is good enough to give you average download and sync for couple of days. Try increase your dbcache.
It's possible but it's a bad practice. Don't trust but verify.
Here a link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5177528.0
Don't do it.
I'm running a 9800X 3D CPU from AMD
With 16gig RAM
And yes 🙂↕️ I am downloading into a HDD
Since this is the only way I have presently.
I can't afford a NVME ssd right now, they are way too overpriced.
Now I understand, thank you.
If you have a large amount of RAM, you can try increasing the Database Cache size in the "bitcoin.conf" file. You can find this file in the folder where you installed the application.
For example, if you have 16GB of RAM, you can enter "dbcache=15625". Essentially, the more RAM you allocate, the faster the syncing process will be.
Your internet connection should be fine at that speed (the one you are using), but is your internet connection limited? or, does it have a fair usage policy (FUP)? Because, it could also be the cause.
By the way, I recommend you upgrade to an SSD as soon as you can afford it. Your processor needs one to run optimally.
I would say Downloading Bitcoin Core will not be less than 70 hours, it can even be more, a few months ago I downloaded Full Node Bitoin, the time I spent downloading was approximately 75 hours.
I tricked some of the data, namely the chainstate folder to the SSD with the symbolic link method, while the blocks folder remained on the HDD.
Actually, that long time is not just about downloading, but reading the data one by one until the end.
So when you only use Full HDD in the download process, just leave it in the background and not see it for at least 70 hours or more. Because if you keep waiting for it, it's really boring.
The bottleneck here isn't the download itself, but the sequential blockchain verification process that guarantees data validity. In other words, your tap might deliver a lot of water, but the distillation process needs to process that water drop by drop, and this can't be parallelized because each block depends on the previous one. The resulting hash from the previous block is used in the next block, hence the term "chain" in its name. It's this technical reason why it takes longer.
The issues one may find as hurdles has more to do with the type of laptop device or external HDD one uses, because we can't actually compare the speed of an old laptop/HDD with a new one.
The database cache to be synced requires on hand adjustment by lowering the node to default 450 or around 1000 to save your system resources.
However we can find that the best way to surpass this kind of arising issues, is to copy the blocks and chain state folders from the data directory of a close friend, to an external drive, before pasting to your own Bitcoin data directory and the node is ready to start after it finishes the normal reindex process.
I believe that is possible but the integrity of the data is the question, if you are running bitcoin core and sync it in a dedicated server and migrate the data that you downloaded on your own using rsync to your local PC, I guess it's doable.
I have never ever tried it beside just syncing directly because it's just easier. So I don't know if it will really works or not.
OP why are you in haste? You don't have to speed things up because nodes are something you do in your background and keep using your laptop or PC for something else and it's also good that you have a very powerful AMD CPU that's good for multitasking, I can remember downloading large amount of games on my PC which is up to 2TB, it took me days to see it done, just ignore it and come back after few days, you will notice a big difference.
Many factors can contribute but to slowness of the verification/validation progress of bitcoin core node, even if you have good internet connection with a very high download sleep of 100mbps and you are using as HDD storage, it can be slow actually, you need to run the bitcoin node on a device with an SSD storage, and with a minimum of 8gb RAM as well, you can still have all those checked and still experience lagging if the peers youre connected to are slow In relaying transactions to your node. Sometimes you can increase the dbcache to a higher value (maybe 3000) it can speedup the download as well.
What!! are you using a hard disk in such a powerful system? This hard disk is wasting the power of your entire system. Even if it is not NVME, you should definitely shift to SATA SSD. Because if you want to download node / bitcoin core with a hard disk, then it will take you about 1 month. I myself was a victim of such a situation, in 2 days it was downloaded like 3% or 4%. Later I downloaded it again on my SATA SSD. And in just 6-7 days it was totally synced.
I also still use HDD to store everything (including chainstate folder that contain UTXO), but with 32GB RAM. Based on my past experience for initial sync, you must set dbcache to about 12.8GB (or a bit more) to ensure all UTXO fit into the RAM to avoid slowdown due to HDD. I mentioned 12.8GB because it was peak UTXO size[1]. But i'm aware allocating that much RAM for dbcache is hard because you only have 16GB RAM. You'll need to close all unused application, configure your OS to use less RAM and ensure even configure your OS to enable compressed RAM[2-3].
P.S. I find it's weird you use such powerful CPU, but also use HDD and 16GB RAM.
[1] https://statoshi.info/d/000000009/unspent-transaction-output-set?orgId=1&from=now-5y&to=now&timezone=browser&refresh=10m
[2] https://www.cnx-software.com/2026/04/15/reminder-enable-zram-on-your-linux-system-to-optimize-ram-usage/
[3] https://www.howtogeek.com/874099/how-to-enable-or-disable-memory-compression-in-windows-11/
If you have an SSD drive and it is a fairly updated version, then if the internet speed is fast, the download will also be very fast. If the internet speed is good, the full block download should be completed in about 2-3 days. However, in some cases it may take less or more time. It mainly depends on the configuration of the PC or laptop and the internet speed. If someone wants to download a full block, then the minimum configuration of my recommendation is i5 7th Gen processor, 1TB SSD and 16GB RAM. Then the device will work little perfectly.
It depends on what OP needs the node for. Running it without increasing some default configs will likely take forever.
Increasing some default configs and running multiple processes alongside it will slow down the PC over time if not immediately, depending on what OP runs on the PC apart from Core. The device specs have limits, so its still going to take a while even if he maxes out the configs, not to mention running other heavy processes alongside the IBD.
He should add more RAM or switch to a solid-state drive (SSD) or do both.