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Creating a Custom Volume

note

Blockchain clients can take up a lot of disk space. By defining the amount of disk space you're willing to dedicate to your client (and the block data that it will be syncing), you can ensure that you still have enough room on your disk for whatever else you need.

Select the relevant operating system for the steps on how to create a custom volume.

Ubuntu
  • Open Terminal
  • Use the df -h command to check the available disk space
  • Choose a maximum size for the volume. We'll use 100GB for this example.
  • Use fallocate to create a file of the desired size, e.g. fallocate -l 100G myfile.img
  • Use mkfs.ext4 to format the file as an ext4 filesystem. e.g. mkfs.ext4 myfile.img
  • Mount the file using mount, e.g. mount -o loop myfile.img /mnt/myvolume
  • The contents will now be available in /mnt/myvolume, up to a maximum of 100GB
MacOS
  • Open Terminal
  • Use the df -h command to check the available disk space
  • Choose a maximum size for the volume. We'll use 100GB for this example.
  • Use hdiutil to create a sparse image of the desired size, e.g. hdiutil create -size 100g -type SPARSE -fs HFS+X myfile.dmg
  • Mount the image using hdiutil, e.g. hdiutil attach myfile.dmg
  • The contents will now be available mounted under /Volumes, up to a maximum of 100GB
Windows
Without Windows Subsystem Linux
  • Open Command Prompt as Administrator
  • Use the dir command to check available disk space on the volume you want to create the disk image
  • Choose a maximum size for the volume. We'll use 100GB for this example.
  • Use the fsutil command to create a sparse file of the desired size, e.g. fsutil file createnew myfile.img 107374182400 (for a 100GB file)
  • Initialize the disk image using diskpart:
    • diskpart
    • select vdisk file="myfile.img"
    • create vdisk maximum=100000
    • attach vdisk
    • exit
  • Format the volume using format, e.g. format F: /FS:NTFS /A:64K /Q
  • The new volume will now be available as drive letter F:, up to the maximum 100GB size

To mount an existing disk image:

  • Open Command Prompt as Administrator
  • Use diskpart
    • select vdisk file="myfile.img"
    • attach vdisk
  • The disk image will be mounted and accessible under the assigned drive letter
With Windows Subsystem Linux
  • Open WSL
  • Use the df -h command to check the available disk space
  • Choose a maximum size for the volume. We'll use 100GB for this example.
  • Use fallocate to create a file of the desired size, e.g. fallocate -l 100G myfile.img
  • Use mkfs.ext4 to format the file as an ext4 filesystem. e.g. mkfs.ext4 myfile.img
  • Mount the file using mount, e.g. mount -o loop myfile.img /mnt/myvolume
  • The contents will now be available in /mnt/myvolume, up to a maximum of 100GB