Q:

Can I download the whole block chain from somewhere?

Every time I turn on the Bitcoin client it takes days to catch up with the block chain.
Are there alternatives to getting it trickling through the peer-to-peer network? Can I just download it somewhere? Wouldn't this be ideal for distribution via BitTorrent? 
If so, how do I import it into the Bitcoin client?
My client would still be validating this data (can it?), and it is all signed and proof-of-worked, so there is no real security problem here, is there?

A:

Note by Murch: This download link is broken and it seems unlikely to me that anyone still provides this service. Network and synchronization code have been immensely improved over the years so that the initial block download via the network is usually acceptably fast.
You can download the blockchain nightlies handled by tcatm (one of the Bitcoin core developers and the operator of bitcoincharts.com). Unpack and copy&replace blkindex.dat, blk0001.dat files into C:\Users\"username"\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin for Windows 7, and run bitcoind with the -rescan option. Then it will take only a couple minutes to download up to latest block. Be aware that manually copied blocks won't get verified.

A:

A good start of downloading block chain is here
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain/

A:

This was an issue with versions of the client prior to 0.3.24 -- once the vast majority of the network switches over, the block chain downloads should proceed as fast as your CPU and network connection can handle.
There are places you can download the block chain, but the client doesn't provide a way to accept the block chain in any form other than from the network. If you're starting from nothing, it will generally take about 10 hours to process the whole block chain. Most of it isn't transfer time, it's CPU time validating all the hashes and signatures.

