user109800: I'd like to run Bitcoin Core but my laptop can't handle the load. I have an external drive with enough space, but I'm unsure if/how to change the file destination upon opening the program. Is this possible?

user113152: If about 5 GB is affordable for your laptop drive, you could still keep the datadir on it, and move the block storage only to the external drive by adding blocksdir=/path/to/external/blocksdir to your bitcoin.conf. This solution allows you to keep your wallets on your laptop drive using default wallet location. If your laptop drive is SSD, while external one is HDD, this approach will give additional performance benefit by keeping the chain state and the block index on SSD.

109800: <p>I'd like to run Bitcoin Core but my laptop can't handle the load. I have an external drive with enough space, but I'm unsure if/how to change the file destination upon opening the program. Is this possible?</p>
 113152: <p>If about 5 GB is affordable for your laptop drive, you could still keep the datadir on it, and move the block storage only to the external drive by adding <code>blocksdir=/path/to/external/blocksdir</code> to your bitcoin.conf. This solution allows you to keep your wallets on your laptop drive using default wallet location. If your laptop drive is SSD, while external one is HDD, this approach will give additional performance benefit by keeping the chain state and the block index on SSD.</p>
