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I have a Bitcoin installation on an SD card, and the blockchain files (blk0001.dat specifically) take up nearly 4 GB of disk space.

Can the blk0001.dat and blk0002.dat files be safely deleted to free up space on my SD card? Will the blockchain just be downloaded again next time I run my bitcoin client?

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    You can use a symlink to put the wallet.dat on your SD card while the rest of the data files are including the blockchain are on your hard drive, if you wish. – Stephen Gornick Aug 31 '12 at 8:23
  • Good idea @StephenGornick! – Josh Aug 31 '12 at 11:49
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    It's a bad idea to symlink wallet.dat! If your client ever shuts down non-cleanly, you may end up with a corrupt wallet. – Luke-Jr Nov 19 '12 at 7:41
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You can delete them just fine, as long as you delete blkindex.dat too. They will be downloaded and processed again. This will take a while, these days, though.

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  • Thanks! A while meaning hours... or weeks? :-) – Josh Aug 30 '12 at 17:30
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    @Josh: YMMV but may be about a day. For this purpose you should consider trying a lightweight client. – Meni Rosenfeld Aug 30 '12 at 20:38
  • From my personal experience Days (About 1 hour for each week you are behind). This is for my 2.4 Ghz machine. Infinite patience. – user20986 Nov 8 '14 at 8:30

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