I guess to keep plots on DVD/Blueray or any other static information carriers is impossible. As the plots are modified by the farming process from time to time. Otherwise the world had a shortage of DVD and BluerayDisks now, but not HDDs. Am I wrong?
Plots are not modified.
However a single plot is over 100GB. Good luck storing them on DVD/Blueray
1 Like
From Wikipaedia:
On July 20, 2010, the research team of Sony and Japanese Tohoku University announced the joint development of a blue-violet laser, to help create Blu-ray Discs with a capacity of 1 TB using only two layers (and potentially more than 1 TB with additional layering).
So… why not…
1 Like
The only requirement is that you can access the storage relatively fast.
Checking for a proof does only read some hashes at random positions in your plot, so fast is only related to seeking through your plot files.
This means you need for every blue-ray disk a extra drive with the disk spinning so that access is fast and you haven’t to exchange or spin up the disk first.
It’s just not cost effective. Even if you have 1TB Blue-ray’s (if you can find it)
To have the same as one 18TB hdd, you need
18 x blue ray disk
18 x blue ray player
computer with 18x sata to connect it all to.
I see… I just thought that plots are not static…
The only ‘natural’/expected process that will modify plots is bit-level corruption or partial failure of the disk(s). You can mount disks as readonly if you are worried about processes writing to them, but that will still not protect you from corruption of plots occasionally.
If you have enough disks you get the point where occasional failures / corruption of data goes from being something you barely have to worry about to something eventually very likely.
Your question makes no sense if you knew how farming works. Let’s imagine you could buy Blu-rays that can store 10 plots (~ 1TB) easily and for cheap. These plots have to be accessible at any given time for the farmer to run its checks and eventually win a block. Let’s compare your case to a simple one using hard drives.
At 20 USD per TB, having 10 TB would roughly store 100 plots. Such a hard drive costs around 200 USD.
On the other hand, if you want to go the Blu-ray route, you need 10 Blu-ray discs + 10 Blu-ray drives. You need 10 drives because all your discs need to be accessible all the time. The cheapest Blu-ray drive I could find on Amazon cost 100 USD. So even if you get your 1 TB discs for free, you still have to invest 1000 USD, 5 times more than in the case of a simple hard drive. And good luck figuring out how to attach 10 Blu-ray drives to a pc. This is completely useless and non-scalable and relies on a hypothetical technology that does not even exist on the consumer market.
1 Like
I think there is another way to look at the meaning behind the OP’s original question. Are Bluray a good way to keep (as in cold storage) plots?
Assuming you found a cheap Blu-Ray burner and a load of RW Bluray, then maybe. The problem with any optical media over time is that the media degrades and will go bad (even if stored in cool temps without light/UV). I have some older/original DVD movies that are starting to go bad. So long term storage outside your farmer is not advised for optical media.
If you wanted to store your plots in cold storage (in the event of a farmer malfunction or something and you had to format everything or replace a bad drive), you’d be better off going USB drives.