I’m definitely swimming up stream, after the snow melt around here. I get that most everyone invested heavily already in their gear and that it will take a quarter century to make a return, if a return is even possible. Definitely the wrong audience to expect open mindedness from. Out of this thread, it would seem the only actual “benefit” is that the big capacity drives conserve a bit more power. Since most people here already bought the fancy expensive things to hold the drives, I get the push back on anything different. Of course WD and Seagate love the idea of selling more big capacity drives. But when the majority of people thought it was a good idea, I’m guessing Chia wasn’t around a $30 value. Let’s hope the pump continues. I don’t think the OG regulars are looking for innovation and new ideas. That my consensus and conclusion. I didn’t really find any compelling arguments supporting why it makes sense to spend more on big drives other than because a guy in a video said you can’t farm Chia with smaller capacity drives. I get why big drives make sense, but I don’t understand why buying them when Chia is at $30-$50 value makes any sense at all. That is a question largely left unanswered. If you could do it all over again, would you make that same capital investment and the prices you paid? I don’t blame anyone, myself included, for not really wanting to think about that question. Regardless of what I paid for my hardware, it’s still a long road for returns.
No doubt about it, because I paid the right prices (which aren’t the prices you talk about at all)
I barely come here anymore, it’s not where the best conversations happen or the cool people hang out anymore as it used to be. It’s become a big echo chamber of people listening to their own voice and ranting
It’s not a bit, a larger drive will use roughly the same power, may be even less than an old drive, so running four 4TB drives will use four times the power of running a single 16TB drive. So it’s more environmentally friendly to use the bigger drive.
From that video “of that guy”, he claims the drives are idle for 99.7% of the time. So if you’re saying it’s 3 cents a day (exaggerating) for the big drive but 12 cents a day for the smaller drives? I call that varying degrees of insignificance. On paper it might sound outrageous. I will again restate that if power costs are high where you live, the POW is not for you. I’m going to exclude those people from any part of this discussion.
I think nobody should argue that a hard drive FULL STOP is a low power consumption device. Then, on top of that, see the claims that the drives are idle 99.7% of the time while farming. That means power is even less significant. FULL STOP. Yes, a chart can show certain things but in this case, dare I say this is like splitting hairs. My option uses more power but it doesn’t use a lot of power. You use less power, but is that on any real significant level? I don’t think so. Be rational about it.
I am disputing this idea that because of this power saving, it’s the greener more environmentally friendly way. You aren’t saving drives from land fills. Agreed? You are taking perfectly usable, mainstream hard drives out of circulation, reducing supply which requires more hard drive manufacturing.
You tell me. Is reducing land fill better than shaving off some power consumption on an already low power device? Calling any hard drive a gas guzzler is funny to me. I get why it’s being made the focal point here though.
As for the prices people paid for drives? If you paid little, then they are likely consumer grade or used. In either case, the longevity of those drives might be questionable. Deals can be found, agreed. If the price made sense, I would have gone there. Maybe. It’s always about supply and demand. If data centers are clearing out 4tb drives? Those need to be sold and the prices reflect that. If Chia does anything price wise, most definitely the premium price will be put on the larger capacity drives. So where would that leave new people getting into Chia? Maybe they throw caution to the wind and buy up the big expensive drives because hey, Chia has reasonable value and ROI isn’t too bad. But history tells us that might be a strategic mistake. Price and ROI is never guaranteed unless you are dealing with an established crypto of which there are about 2 in existence.
Most definitely I will post some power consumption data in the near future because I owe the debate that. I don’t have any giant hard drives to compare. But I will report at the wall figures, with the math. From there, people can decide for themselves how outrageous it really is. Or maybe it’s a big nothingburger. Remember “that guy”, Mr. Congeniality from the video claiming the drives are idle for basically 99% of the time. He said it. It must be true.
I fully expect your math to be flawed, pretty much everything else is. You just don’t get it do you?
I read about a sentence of what you write and then give up, as it’s just plain wrong, and you clearly can’t or won’t grasp what people are saying. Your clearly having a mass debate with yourself.
I’m out.
That actually breaks my heart to hear that. Your deep, well thought out contributions will be deeply missed.
Ok. I am a guy who pays 33cnt/watt and that a lot.
So my strategy is to use small 4tb drives and put k34 plot on it. If madmax can do k36 I would go for k36.
Then all my USB drives can be turned off easily after first chia scans so they stop spinning and use any energy while farming. When a proof is needed (which happens once 20 min per 4tb drive) then disk spins ups for proof and going to sleep again. The cost of external 4tb drives is around 40 bucks on ebay which gives 10$ per TB. Thats extremely cheap. Also use USB2 not USB3 hubs to connect all of this army of small disks - usb3 is very limited.
And what process are you going to use to turn off the drives at the right time?? Then turn them back on?
Interesting approach for sure. I dismissed idea of letting drives go to sleep ignoring > k32 plots.
Did you check real power consumption of your farm per TB?
10$ / TB for such tiny drives, not sure if it really is a good price.
Just put windows setting - power off the drive after 1 min of usage *actually you can get it to low 10 sec), USB should be able to turn off, in chia - refresh plots every 10 hours only.
And where are you going to set Chia to refresh every 10 hours?
in settings file.
One more thng i should he OG plots not NFTs ones. NFT as I understand need to be scanned every second. OG only when proof is needed.
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No comment on your other opinions, but,
I dont think thats true, if you pool with them you will get pool checks, but if your solo i dont think that happens.
Edit.
Can your hdd wake and respond in time if theyre sleeping?
My usual response time is 23 sec with such a setup. Only once I saw 32 sec wich is more than needed.
Is that for the initial response, or to check for further proofs to actially win a reward?
Whats the cost of spin up on hdd, does that outweigh any savings by allowing hdd to sleep?
That’s why actual power consumption would be interesting…
This is the worst advice in this thread.
HDDs are happy when they are spinning 24/7 without parking the head. This way they can last a decade. Every sleep or power off cycle wears it down tremendously.
Electricity savings doesn’t come close to the loss of hardware due to misuse.
Also you mentioned 23s average lookup time- that’s ridiculously bad! You want to aim sub- 1 second to be able to find proofs. Did you know that each block there can be multiple rewards distributed, to those who didn’t sign the block but still found the proof? To be able to catch that distribution, the farm needs to respond as quickly as possible.
Oh also the spin-up routine uses a lot more power initially, causing power spike - also will wear down your PSU and cause problems when multiple drives spin up at the same time. It could end up using more power on startups compared to stabilized spinning.
I agree with most of what you say, however
Isn’t it within 30 sec to provide all proofs etc ?