Running a Bitcoin Full Node requires over ≈800GB of storage. This guide shows you how to keep Umbrel fast on an internal drive while storing blockchain data on an external drive.

Requirements

Proxmox Setup

For these steps, I followed the video by @absprog on YouTube.

Prepare External Drive

  1. Connect external drive to Proxmox
  2. Go to Disks in Proxmox
  3. Select your external drive → Wipe Disk
  4. Select the drive again → Initialize Disk with GPT

Create Directory Storage

  1. Go to Datacenter → Storage
  2. Click Directory → Create: Directory
  3. In the popup:
    • Disk: Select your wiped drive
    • Filesystem: ext4
    • Name: Choose a name (e.g., “kingston”)
  4. Confirm

Attach to VM

  1. VM → Hardware → Add → Hard Disk
  2. Storage: Select your storage (e.g., “kingston”)
  3. Disk size: Use full capacity (e.g., 2000 GB)
  4. Confirm

Umbrel Setup

Open the terminal in Umbrel:
Umbrel → Settings → Advanced settings → Terminal (open) → umbrelOS

Check disks

# Search for the right disk
lsblk

Look for your 2TB external drive (in this example it’s /dev/sdb).

Important: Your device name might be different! Use the 2TB drive, NOT your system disk.

# Create mount point
sudo mkdir /mnt/bitcoin-data

# Mount the drive (already formatted by Proxmox)
sudo mount /dev/sdb /mnt/bitcoin-data

# Get UUID for auto-mount
sudo blkid /dev/sdb

# Edit fstab
sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add this line at the end (replace with YOUR UUID from the blkid command):

UUID=your-uuid-here  /mnt/bitcoin-data  ext4  defaults  0  2

Test & verify mount

# Test auto-mount
sudo mount -a

# Verify it worked
df -h | grep bitcoin-data

Prepare Bitcoin Node directory

# Prepare Bitcoin directory
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/bitcoin-data/bitcoin
sudo chown -R $(whoami):$(whoami) /mnt/bitcoin-data/bitcoin

# Create symlink (BEFORE installing Bitcoin!)
mkdir -p ~/umbrel/app-data
cd ~/umbrel/app-data
ln -s /mnt/bitcoin-data/bitcoin bitcoin

Install Bitcoin Node

Open Umbrel → App Store → Install Bitcoin Node

Done! Blockchain goes to external drive, system stays fast.

Verify

# Check symlink
ls -la ~/umbrel/app-data/ | grep bitcoin

# Monitor storage
df -h | grep -E "sda|sdb"

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