Placing your Bitcoin data at a new location without any collateral effects

In Windows, by default, the Bitcoin client keeps its data directory at

%appdata%/bitcoin

It happens that this directory will grow, and grow… eventually reaching a size not admissible for being kept at the system’s main volume. Currently, March 2014, the Bitcoin data is ~21 GB, while Litecoin’s is ~2.7 GB. Too big for me. Not only the size might become an issue, but also the system’s perceived performance might be compromised, because the main volume is used for so many other operations that the reading/writing of the digital currencies’ data can have its negative impact.

One solution? Move the data folder to another drive, for example, a D: volume. Just cut/paste the %appdata%/bitcoin folder to D:.

But WAIT. If you do this, now you must start the Bitcoin client NOT via the usual shortcut, but via a custom shortcut that will point the software to the new location:

bitcoin-qt.exe -datadir=D:/bitcoin

Is there a better solution? Yes there is:

(1) Close any running Bitcoin client and/or server.

(2) Move %appdata%/bitcoin to D:

You’ll now have a D:/bitcoin folder which corresponds to the previous %appdata%/bitcoin folder.

(3) Create a symlink from %appdata%/bitcoin to D:/bitcoin

mklink /D %appdata%/Bitcoin D:/bitcoin

(4) Now you can launch your Bitcoin client the way you always did, that it will still find the %appdata%/bitcoin location, which however is actually located at D:/bitcoin and not at the main volume.

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