Is your #Bitcoin node taking forever to sync? I may have stumbled on a solution.

I was using an external SSD connected to my Mac to download Bitcoin Core. It got to 60% and it was taking forever! After some digging, I found out that moving the 'indexes' and 'chainstate' folder onto my local hard drive would speed up the process. I was skeptical but gave it a shot. Doing so saved me a few days of sync time!

Step 1: Quit Bitcoin Core

Step 2: Copy the existing folder ('indexes' and 'chainstate' ) from the external SSD onto the local drive. (I chose Desktop for ease)

Step 3: Rename the existing folder on external SSD ('indexes' and 'chainstate') -> ('indexes-old' and 'chainstate-old' )

Step 4: Create an Alias/shortcut of the local folders and move it to the external SSD. If you're comfortable with terminal, naviate to the external SSD to the Bitcoin core folder and use the ln function ('ln -sf /Users/user/Desktop/indexes indexes')

Step 5: If you used the Alias method, rename the folders by removing 'alias' from the folder name. This is NOT needed if you used the Terminal method

Step 6: Open Bitcoin Core and let it sync (it should be much faster now)

Step 7: Once Bitcoin Core is synced, you can leave the folder setup as is or revert in such a way that all folders are reading off the external SSD (ie remove the alias folders and copy over the contents of the local folders onto the SSD)