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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?
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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 9, 2016 at 7:46

2 Answers 2

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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

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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 9, 2016 at 8:14
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    It's working as a prototype, but will only be rolled out in Geth 1.5 :)
    – Péter Szilágyi
    Mar 9, 2016 at 8:37
  • 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, 2017 at 11:02
  • It's definitely not true, I am on latest geth stable and it's 64gbs
    – Adnan Aftab
    Oct 27, 2017 at 13:39
  • Up to hundreds of GB now. :)
    – CivFan
    Oct 26, 2021 at 3:36
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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!

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    I don't think this is the correct platform to promote one implementation over another.
    – Péter Szilágyi
    Mar 9, 2016 at 8:41
  • Why is it so small? Is it pruned?
    – q9f
    Mar 9, 2016 at 13:26
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    I'm really not promoting one platform over another. There's a request to use the Ethereum blockchain with less of a storage penalty. Parity can allow that. I don't know how. Must be the Rust implementation somehow
    – Jon Ramvi
    Mar 9, 2016 at 21:11
  • Can we move private keys from ethererum wallet to parity?
    – Adnan Aftab
    Oct 27, 2017 at 13:40
  • @AdnanAftab I could have detailed this more if it was a new question, but the quick answer is: Yes. Use www.myetherwallet.com
    – Jon Ramvi
    Oct 27, 2017 at 19:38

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