How to implement multiple wallet folders located out of the bitcoin blockchain folder?

Question

After substantial research I could not find any solution for this seemingly simple implementation of the Bitcoin-Core app.

Here is what I am trying to achieve: Running a full node on one computer require up do 400GB of drive storage. It appear, after all my research, that if one wants to access more than one wallet from the same computer, it would be required that each wallet be run from a different folder altogether, otherwise the Bitcoin-Core will act strangely, refuse to launch, or ask the user to create a new wallet altogether. Add to that, would also be required that each wallet be launched with a different shortcut, which is well acceptable.

I am running a Windows 7 computer that can hold 1TB on a secondary data hard drive. The first drive is an SSD and is strictly utilized for the OS and software installation. Holding the whole bitcoin blockchain is OK but holding 2 copies or 3 is out of the question, besides would be kind of ridiculous since X times 400GB of the same data makes no sense. What I am trying to do is be able to launch a different wallet via its own shortcut. After several experimentation the only way I found to do this would be that every time I want to run a wallet I have to replace a whole bunch of files related to that wallet into the \bitcoin folder. This is a tedious task and a relatively unsafe way to do things. Such practice is prone to errors and could potentially be risky to lose some bitcoins.

I’ve experimented with the shortcut option

–walletdir=D:\AllWallets\MyWalletA\

but this doesn’t work for some reason. The parameter is completely ignore without generating any error. The only way I found that could work would be to maintain the whole blockchain 3X into 3 different folders and launch any of them with the appropriate shortcut. An option that require 1.2TB and makes no practical sense since it is utilizing so much hard drive memory storage.

So here is the question:
How can I store a specific wallet located in FolderA that is completely different then D:\Bitcoin\
(were D:\Bitcoin\ would be the complete blockchain location) ?

If I could do that then I could also create any number of FolderB, FolderC, FolderD that would hold my different wallets and that I could launch any of those wallets ( not simultaneously ) when I need to do a transaction. All these folders could store the wallet files but not the whole blockchain. Thanks for your help

Answer 1

One work around the limitation of wallet location is that into the \bitcoin folder there could be a subfolder named, as an example, \AllWallets. Into this subfolder there could be many subfolders containing the files for each wallet desired. These files are the Wallet.dat, .walletlock , and db.log

When bitcoin-qt.exe is launch with NO wallet it will alert the user to either create a new wallet or to utilize the menu “File > Open Wallet” and will offer to open any of the subfolder wallet files that are located into each of those subfolder. For instance there could be 3 subfolders called \JackWallet , \AlfredWallet and \JoeWallet.

The user can open as many wallets as desired ( it seems ). A selector box will appear into the bitcoin-qt GUI on the top right corner. This selector will offer to work with any one of the currently opened wallets. This way it becomes very convenient for the user to be able to utilize the wallet of his choice for payment or any other operation. The selection change is quick and appear very functional.

More experimentation is necessary to become familiarized with this newly discovered feature. Although this does not solve the limitation about Wallet location being out of the \bitcoin folder, it sure render the GUI more convenient for the utilization of multiple wallets.