Bitcoin QT wallet location

Default Location

Windows

Go to Start -> Run (or press WinKey+R) and run this:

explorer %APPDATA%\Bitcoin Bitcoin's data folder will open. For most users, this is the following locations:

C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Application data\Bitcoin (XP) C:\Users\YourUserName\Appdata\Roaming\Bitcoin (Vista and 7) "AppData" and "Application data" are hidden by default.

You can also store Bitcoin data files in any other drive or folder.

If you have already downloaded the data then you will have to move the data to the new folder. If you want to store them in D:\BitcoinData then click on "Properties" of a shortcut to bitcoin-qt.exe and add -datadir=D:\BitCoinData at the end as an example:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin\bitcoin-qt.exe" -datadir=d:\BitCoinData Start Bitcoin, now you will see all the files are created in the new data directory.

Linux

By default Bitcoin will put its data here:

~/.bitcoin/ You need to do a "ls -a" to see directories that start with a dot.

If that's not it, you can do a search like this:

find / -name wallet.dat -print 2>/dev/null

Mac

By default Bitcoin will put its data here:

~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/

Files

• .lock
• bitcoin.conf [optional]
• blkxxxx.dat [Versions prior to v0.8.0]
  • Contains concatenated raw blocks. Stored are actual Bitcoin blocks, in network format, dumped to disk raw.
• blkindex.dat [Versions prior to v0.8.0]
  • Indexing information used with blk.dat
• __db.xxx
• db.log
• debug.log
  • Bitcoin's verbose log file. Automatically trimmed from time to time.
• wallet.dat
  • Storage for keys, transactions, metadata, and options. Please be sure to make backups of this file. It contains the keys necessary for spending your bitcoins.
• addr.dat [Versions prior to v0.7.0]
  • Storage for ip addresses to make a reconnect easier
• peers.dat [Versions v0.7.0 and later]
  • Storage for peer information to make a reconnect easier. This file uses a bitcoin-specific file format, unrelated to any database system.

database subdirectory

Contains BDB journaling files

testnet3 subdirectory

Contains testnet versions of these files (if running with -testnet)

blocks subdirectory

[v0.8 and above] Contains blockchain data.

• blk*.dat
• Stored are actual Bitcoin blocks, in network format, dumped to disk raw. They are only needed for re-scanning missing transactions in a wallet, reorganizing to a different part of the chain, and serving the block data to other nodes that are synchronizing.