1 terabyte hard drive cliff \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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2216 sats \ 48 comments \ @jasonb 13 Jan bitcoin

The blockchain is now over 600 gigabytes. Am I correct to assume that a lot of nodes are about to drop off of the network in the near future? My 1 terabyte node has 74 gigabytes of free space left. @DarthCoin has assured me that it will be easy to transfer it over to a new machine (although I probably need to get to it soon), but can everybody afford a machine with a 2 terabyte hard drive?

Will we see a significant amount of nodes leave the network as 1 terabyte hard drives are no longer big enough to run Bitcoin? Have their been milestones like this before I was involved in the network? I'd assume so as I have machines from a time when bitcoin was around that only have 250 gigabytes. I've been thinking about the blocksize wars and thought that there have to occasionally be milestones in which the blockchain just reaches a standard commercially made disk size and a bunch of folks have to shut their nodes off.

Anyway, not too worried, just curious if anybody else is thinking about this.

Fun fact, as a kid, I remember a neighbor calling my family rich because we had a computer with a 40 megabyte hard drive.

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204 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 14 Jan

This worry about cost of nodes is the ultimate FUD, imo. (Not saying that you're FUDding, but you can find a lot of it.) The number of people who could just barely scrape together the cost of the minimal possible hardware to run of node are a negligible portion of nodes overall. The cost of hardware has been falling faster than the blockchain's been growing.

That's not the same thing as recognizing that some people are going to need to upgrade, and won't bother doing it. That kind of "I don't really care enough to keep fucking around with this" will assuredly result in attrition. But a bunch of those lost will be replaced by new people, and non-economic nodes have a tenuous value to the network anyway.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @jasonb OP 14 Jan

Yeah, I’m mostly sharing this out of curiosity. The only real FUD I’m worried about in all of Bitcoin is mining pool centralization… which is maybe not a huge concern, but certainly more of a concern than the standard Bitcoin talking head seems to admit to.

39 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullcount 21h

Enterprise (professional/enthusiast/uncle jim) nodes tend to run in a virtual machine environment (and/or in the cloud) where increasing storage size is as easy as updating a config or the storage automatically expands.

Additionally, people use their nodes with different "loadouts". Some may also have electrum or fulcrum index running alongside (adds 100-300GB). Some might be running mempool project locally (add some GBs). Some may be running other nodes like a Monero node on the same disk (adds about 300GB). It means not "everyone" will run out of space at the same time.

227 sats \ 7 replies \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

can everybody afford a machine with a 2 terabyte hard drive?

the price per TB is getting fucking cheap every year.
Bitcoin is not for everybody, only for the brave and knowledgeable. Not all grandmas have to run a node, damn it. You the knowledgeable one will run it for your family.
Don't worry too much, zero sync is coming https://zerosync.org/

LOL when I see people complaining about how much occupy the blockchain on a damn drive.... guys, you are fucking secure your generational wealth not playing games !

You are spending lots of money on bullshit crap but you can't afford a damn 50 cuckbucks for a damn 2TB drive that will secure the wealth of your entire family?

I am sure you have many more TB with bullshit useless photos on your mobile than that node with blocks.

182 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightcoin 13 Jan

Don't worry too much, zero sync is coming https://zerosync.org/

The problem ZeroSync solves is orthogonal to the issue of hard drive space. If someone is worried about hard drive space they can run a pruned node -- the full history and all future blocks are still fully validated, just not stored on the hard drive.

42 sats \ 2 replies \ @Satosora 13 Jan

People arent understanding how insignificant the price is compared to the reward. People just want to make free profit without having to work for it.

25 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

Imagine what those big blockers are saying about the blockchain size now...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 13 Jan

A lot of people say that the legacy wallets also have too high of a fee, but who cares about the fee? In a month, you will have made the fee 5x over. You have to put things in perspective, though. All the big miners, I bet they have 2 or 3 copies of the blockchain just in case.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @jasonb OP 13 Jan

Don't worry too much, zero sync is coming https://zerosync.org/

You may need to take into account that some people (I’m talking about myself here) are simply not smart enough to understand zero sync no matter how much we read about it…

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @jasonb OP 13 Jan

Yeah, I'm thinking more from a decentralization standpoint. So I'm always going to run a node no matter what. So will lots of people in rich countries. But that's the whole problem, right? If folks in less wealthy countries simply can't run nodes, doesn't that create a concentration?

96 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

28 sats \ 9 replies \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 13 Jan

You can configure bitcoind to prune the blockchain if you are running out of space.

While Darth is right that changing over drives is trivial, this becomes non-trivial the moment the server is in another country and physical access is restricted. I suspect I will have to migrate to pruning nodes, as opposed to archival nodes. It would be too expensive to physically upgrade the drive.

0 sats \ 8 replies \ @jasonb OP 13 Jan

But as I understand, a pruned node isn’t helpful in the event of a 51% attack, right? This is why I don’t like the idea of all the full nodes getting more concentrated in richer areas.

31 sats \ 6 replies \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

51% attack is not about nodes. The world will not make too much difference because your node is offline or pruned. And I am sure you are not a real seeding node with port 8333 open and large bandwidth to share to the whole world, you are just a meaningless umbrel node with just 8 connections active.

All this crap with "I am running a node to help the network" is a myth... you are not helping any network with a crappy node, you are only verifying your own txs. That's all.

If you really want to help the network you need a fucking good machine wide open, sharing to many leechers, with good bandwidth, port open, running on all networks. and be 100% reliable seeder for the blocks And that is not for everybody.

The world doesn't give a shit about your shity umbrel node that barely have 10 peers and also on Tor, losing connection all the time. That is not "helping the network".

50 sats \ 5 replies \ @cleaningup12 14 Jan

When are you going on a podcast DC? Could be the move?

Wear a bandana shades like gigi calle if needed

15 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 14 Jan

I do not like podcasts. I like more to write guides than talk on podcasts. Do I need a bandana when I have my own Vader mask?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @mo 22h

Darth using ai.. that's weird!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 22h

not mine. somebody sent it to me. is nice. I use it for some NFC cards.

15 sats \ 1 reply \ @jasonb OP 14 Jan

I mean, maybe he already does do them. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Darth coin was some famous podcaster?

15 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 14 Jan

No. Darth will be the last man on Earth without running a podcast.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 13 Jan

Depends how far the pruning is going back. Bitcoin itself will only check the last n blocks on startup, its not parsing the full chain every time.

It is exceptionally unlikely that someone will ever have the computation power to reorg hundreds of gigabytes of Bitcoin blockchain.

Something also about checkpoints but im not sure the status of these in 2025

65 sats \ 12 replies \ @SimpleStacker 13 Jan

I'm worried about this myself. I am going to have to upgrade my node's hardware within one year, maybe less. I have lightning channels on it. I'm going to need a guide on how to migrate a bitcoin fullnode + lightning node to new hardware.

50 sats \ 6 replies \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

FFS is so fucking simple that even a kid can do it... Just grab an image cloning software like Acronis for example, put the both disks together and start the cloning, sector by sector. Done.

19 sats \ 3 replies \ @lightcoin 13 Jan

Just grab an image cloning software like Acronis for example, put the both disks together and start the cloning, sector by sector. Done.

gonna want to be real careful of this with the lightning nodes, so there is no concern about force close or justice transactions. maybe better for a novice to close the channels and reopen them on the new node once it is set up.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

no, cloning a disk have nothing to do with LN channels. Your node is offline anyways and you are not running both copies in the same time.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @lightcoin 13 Jan

if you don't run both at the same time then there is no justice tx risk. but if your node is offline then you cannot respond to cooperative close requests which risks a force close.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

Are you going to clone a disk in more than 2 weeks? LOL

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 13 Jan

Did they read my guides first?

Not yet but I will! When the time comes...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @jasonb OP 13 Jan

Yeah, yeah, yeah, haha, we’ll be fine, we’ll figure it out

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @jasonb OP 13 Jan

Yeah, personally it's my lightning node that I'm worried about. That's going to be tricky. Otherwise, in my case, I'd just spin it down and spin up a new node on a bigger drive.

50 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

So I wrote all those damn guides for nothing...

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @jasonb OP 13 Jan

Darth guides are quite helpful. That’s (migrating the node to a different drive or machine) just a new part of the journey for me. In other words, haven’t got to that problem, so I haven’t go to that guide. But that’s just me, (and apparently @SimpleStacker) my main point with this post doesn’t have to do with my node or lightning. It’s about what people who can’t afford it are going to do to run full, not-necessarily-lightning nodes.

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

That's why I always said: learn to be a good node runner and start be the "community or family LN bank". https://darth-coin.github.io/merchants/private-banks-over-ln-en.html It is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 13 Jan

I am still learning, still a padawan when it comes to lightning.

62 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullama 13 Jan

You could have said that 500GB was the tipping point, but it wasn't.

The same will apply to 1TB.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @jasonb OP 13 Jan

Sure, and I’m sure there will be more. I’m more curious than worried, like is there a spring like affect at each of these checkpoints where a bunch of nodes start to go offline but then new ones get spun up as the new technology comes down in price.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

two fucking simple steps LOL

Buy a new 2TB SSD https://www.amazon.com/ssd-2tb/s?k=ssd+2tb
Clone the old drive:

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 13 Jan

Here a quick guide...

Put that new SSD drive into a USB case and connect it to your node machine. Optional you can take both drives to another machine and connect both directly on SATA for better and fast transfer.
Put the Acronis image ISO on a USB or CD as you like, as bootable disk. Here you can download it for free (grab it now until the link is not expiring in 10 days 660MB): https://gofile.io/d/HR349i even that you will not do it today. Save the damn ISO for later.
Boot with the Acronis USB or CD boot
Select from Acronis menu "Clone disks"
Select partitioning if you have more partitions and select "proportionally" or manual and size as you like.
Wait to finish and done, now you can put the new drive in your node machine.

Is not so hard, you just need patience.

71 sats \ 3 replies \ @john_doe 14 Jan

I don't know how people set up their node, but I already switched 1-2 years ago to a 2TB disk, and the machine is the same. I just had to mount a different peripheral. In my case it is external but with a screwdriver it shouldn't take too much time to swap an old disk though. In my setup only configuration files are on the machine (with the OS). I wonder, in your setup you purposefully don't want to use a peripheral, or is it that you bought a node which doesn't have a tutorial to show you how to mount an external hard drive or SSD?

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @jasonb OP 14 Jan

I installed Umbrel on a mini desktop computer and then set up Bitcoin core and lightning on that. It was all in a GUI (after the initial Umbrel install) at the time, as I was just starting to relearn computers out of a newfound passion for Bitcoin. I don’t think I’m going to personally have a hard time with the transition at this point, but admittedly haven’t started yet. So I didn’t buy a node. I made it, but like, the SUPER easy way.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @john_doe 14 Jan

I think it is a good setup and good motivation as well! Where do you save blockchain data? Do you have an option to mount an external drive on Umbrel with the click of a button? In my case I use docker-compose (custom setup) and mount the external drive at boot as specified in /etc/fstab. If Umbrel doesn't provide an equivalent setting, you could ask for a feature request. The advantage of doing it externally is you could buy separately a NAS to save all that data (let us say it includes family photos), so that you can have an automatic backup in case of disk failure. If you do it for the whole disk on your computer you would probably save uneeded data (related to your OS).

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @jasonb OP 18h

I just save the blockchain right on the hard drive. As far as mounting an external drive, haven't looking into it yet. I'd imagine that will be the solution if it turns out it's possible. Darth is ALL OVER the Umbrel troubleshooting forum, so I'm sure that when I've got the time to take care of this, I'll probably just be reading one of his guides over there.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @nym 13 Jan

I bet it’ll happen, but I don’t think we would notice it on a chart. Dedicated runners will upgrade.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @jasonb OP 13 Jan

But won't it just be the dedicated runners that can afford it, leading to more node runners in certain areas?

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @aljaz 23h

it will just strengthen the ecosystem because all the people who "run a node" with some out of the box software will need to learn enough to migrate this.

the developers of various node in a box solutions will have to provide better solutions for those people so software will get better

and bitcoin wont care.

but it will be interesting to see how many LN nodes will die because of that

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @TNStacker 22h

How much does it cost to not increase node storage space for Bitcoin, eh?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @af1f6f3e17 21h

I have three with 2tb, will make another one so those that give up pass the vote to me lol

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Miranda 13 Jan

certainly to make BTC nodes, they can pay bigger disks, it is really a fact that we must take into account when creating our nodes, I do not think that they will abandon the network, but rather make a transaction of the blocks to a new architecture with more storage space to continue calculating blocks in the blockchain. already 2 and even 4 tb are small space compared to larger disks of 12 and 16 TB. the details is the type of disk. the blockchain operates on ssd or simple native hard disks? if so, i think that self-encrypting or red label disks can favor the speed of the calculations (mining). self-encryption used for datacenters on disks with high write speed and evidently more secure than a solid hard disk is an interesting variant... have any stackers thought about this? thanks for sharing. sats for everyone.