Has anyone tried editing nodeDbPath inside %PROGRAMFILES%\Daedalus\launcher-config.yaml ? (try wscite or Notepad++ or VS Code; Notepad.exe won’t work because of the Unix line-endings.) I might use mklink /j, but think I would prefer editing the config. Incidentally, I hope the Cardano team assigns the task of optimizing disk usage fairly high priority; these millions of <1KB files are bad for many filesystems (NTFS, ZFS, and various Linux filesystems with inode limits), especially with virus scanners running, etc. I may try creating a VFS, such as mounting a VHDX formatted to Fat32 or ntfs with a very small cluster size (1kb or 512 bytes), but I think it would be more efficient if Cardano created its own database or VFS or used some simple database library like Berkley DB or maybe even Sqlite.)
Agreed, I am shocked that Cardano uses the file system as a database. Why are you storing 2.4 million files (6GB size on NTFS disk, 2.5GB file size) on my boot disk? It is deplorable. REALLY crappy design in my opinion.
Expect a significant redesign on this with upcoming v1.3 and .4
Even though I’ve been aware of this topic for quite some time, having passed it on to people who asked for this sort of solution, specifically in the TG tech support/general chat, I wanted to bump this topic once more.
It recently helped me a lot saving up some disk space, as well as add another layer of security to storing the Cardano blockchain and wallet, as it becomes a kind of ‘cold wallet’ storage.
In addition, I was also able to manage to install Daedalus on 2 different machines and move in between them with the external HDD, without trouble.
Even though it all works, one should realize that doing this sort of setup is not common and somewhat experimental (even though it’s been working flawlessly for me personally). If you have any doubts about it, just try it out on another PC or in a VM environment first.
Many thanks and props to the original topic starter!
Cheers!
EDIT: added a quick video of what a possible setup could look like, here: https://twitter.com/Katsumoto87/status/1085789925008523264
Hi lyrx1,
Can you please elaborate a bit on this for us mac laymen?
At what point in the six steps should we input the code you have provided into the terminal?
Mac Users Help!
So I have tried to do this and was able to syn the blocks onto an external hard drive. But every time I reopen the wallet (with hard drive plugged in) it automatically creates a Deadalus folder on my computer and starts the syn process from zero!
/Users/Lazz/Library/Application Support/Daedalus
(my user name is “Lazz”)
Does anyone have any idea how I can tell the wallet to use the Deadalus folder in my hard drive instead of creating a new one and resyncing every time I open the wallet?
I took lyrx 1’s advice and did the following:
ln -s /Users/Lazz/Library/Application Support/Daedalus /Volumes/hard/Daedalus
(“hard” is my hard drive)
Does anyone know if this is correct or if I did something wrong?
Thanks for your help!
This did not work and it when I try to reopen the Daedalus mainnet it now says I dont have the .lock file.
This was never officially supported and always subject to change. I’d give up on it and reinstall with default options, but it’s possible somebody might find a way to get it working.
For Windows 10 is the right way:
mklink /D “C:\Users\youraccountname\AppData\Roaming\Daedalus Mainnet” “D:\Daedalus Mainnet”
I know this is an old thread, and I was looking for a solution to this problem for some time… So here is what I did.
I bought a new 1TB SSD USB drive and installed windows 10 on it. To make it a bootable SSD USB drive.
here is a video I found to explain how to do it…
Once I got it all set up and changed the bootup option in my laptop’s BIOS to boot from a USB drive and windows loaded up I just installed Daedalus on to the SSD USB drive that had win10 home installed on it… and once it was installed, I deleted the folder Daedalus on the SSD USB drive “C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Daedalus” and replaced it by copying the same folder from the main C:\ drive folder on the laptop to the SSD USB drive…
So I booted up from the main laptops C: drive and plugged in the SSD USB drive so it became D: drive then I copied the Daedalus folder from C: to D:
Then rebooted the laptop and loaded win10 up from the SSD USB drive and started Daedalus and let it finishing Syncing. Works well.
So now anytime I want to access my Daedalus wallet I just plug in my SSD USB drive to boot up a fresh installation of Win10 with only Daedalus installed on it and away I go. and when done I just unplug it and put it away… A lot more secure than having Daedalus installed on the main C: drive all the time while accessing the internet…
I hope this helps someone out…
I’m interested to do this as well. Did you figure it out?
Also, did you need to install a copy of mac OS on the external hard drive for all this to work? I’m pretty new to this.
Amazing work!! Thank you very much 
Deadalus has been slow to reconnect to the network. Moreover, after I connected my wallet the balance and transaction history are 0. Any thoughts?
Granted at the time of the post voting is happening, but should I be scared?
It just needed time to sync… Luckily I checked my wallet transactions, or I would still be in panic mode. Link goes to transaction checker. Cardano Explorer
Hi guys. Does anybody have an idea how we can do this on Linux? Thank you in advance!
Hi everyone. It is year 2024 and the blockchain size has >100GB. Now I wanted to sync my wallet to restake my ADA but I have now enough free space left. What can I do? Can I just run the installer on a new HDD or do I really need a Windows installation on every hard drive I want to sync my wallet on? I am kinda confused now. Thanks for the help!
The most prominent recommendation is: Forget Daedalus! Use one of the light wallets – Eternl, Typhon, Lace, … https://developers.cardano.org/showcase/?tags=wallet and restore your seed phrase there. They do not need that kind of resources, your wallet is there almost instantly, you can manage staking just as well from them and they basically all have better user interfaces and much more features than Daedalus. There is almost no reason to use Daedalus at all.
If you insist on using Daedalus, the process described in https://iohk.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/900004340586-How-to-symlink-Daedalus-chain-folder is the only way to get the chain stored on another hard drive than the one booted from.