Hi. I'm still learning about these. What exactly is the difference between a Bootstrap vs a Snapshot? What are the pros and cons of each? Sorry if this is explained already. BTW thanks for doing this.
A bootstrap.dat file allows a new wallet (not synced) to rapidly import the initial blocks from a local file instead of slowly downloading blocks from random peers
across the internet. Since you are pulling the blocks from your hard drive it is much faster than using the internet.
However when importing blocks the wallet does have to verify every block, which means a 2 or 3 year old chain can take a few days to import and tie up your memory & processor while verifying the blocks.
A Snapshot is a copy of the entire Wallet Database at the time the snapshot was made, it will already include any database directories & all database files.
It can be downloaded from the internet and it will start syncing from where it was created, without having to re verify and recreate the other database files & directories.
If you download & install a snapshot only created a day or so ago, after installing the snapshot it will be less than 1 hour before your wallet is synced and running.
Pros:
Snapshot will always be faster, as no re-verification of blocks is done.
Bootstrap will always be a smaller download, since it does not include all of the database files, just the one needed for the bootstrap.dat .
Cons:
Snapshots will always be a Bigger Download.
Bootstraps will always take more time to re-verify the blocks and tie up your PC.
