I have big drives mostly 18tb usb. I have 417TB at 205W at the wall
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Cost of running a drive is ~20$ / year at the quoted $ / kWh. For small drives potential savings on energy will easily compensate cost of additional wear.
I am pretty sure that energy required to spin up the disk is not more than running it at full speed for a few seconds.
Maybe @sgluhov has some real numbers regarding energy consumption?
Seeing something like 1 Watt / drive would be impressive.
I might try with the 8 TB USB drives I was planning to sell…
Let’s suppose there are 100 farmers in the entire network who have proofs for a given challenge. The blockchain will award 2 xch to one of them who signs the block; and additionally to up to 3 more who submitted proofs as well. Everyone else are out of luck, because they were too slow
Hmm, ok, i never heard that before. I thought as many who had adequate proofs got the reward, and if coin issuance got to high difficulfy went up to reign in the issuance.
Where did you read the max reward per block was x 4?
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With everyone who dropped out of this thread I am tickled it still has life in it. Or maybe those that bowed out weren’t the glue that they thought they were.
Interesting the scrutiny and discussion about the other small drive lover. I’m all ears on the logic or questions of his setup. Seems unconventional yet intriguing.
Regarding spin up vs running 24 hours and wear on drives. Answer me this enlightened one. Is it not better to spread out that wear, to say, more drives? Less work? Like say, having 10 horses to do the work rather than piling all the work on 5 horses and saying you’re saving on food and costs? Sure those 5 horses might seem more efficient. Until they start dropping dead from being over worked. Food for thought? I would rather keep my horses alive given the choice.
Just keep making plots and filling up disks, more plots is better and it keeps you off the street 
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I think you mean unicorns. When they tap their hooves they make the magic internet money that is made of dreams and wishful thinking.
My large plot drives are not having much IO but it is enough to stop them spinning down. Perhaps small drives could spin down more often and save more power
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The answer to that would be unknown because everyone uses big huge drives. This is a lack of data and information because Mr. Congeniality from that video says you can’t use smaller drives to farm Chia. Everyone follows the herd. Must. Use. Big. Capacity. Drives. No. Other. Method. Is. Logical.
I have no issue being a trend setter. A $30 coin isn’t worthy of a big capital investment. Chia went backwards. People dove into this when price was very high. Maybe a more sensible investment for a $30 coin is the more intelligent way to go instead. From anything I’ve ever looked at, and this comes from a lot of research on the used market, you cannot buy a big drive and come close to being fiscally responsible on this.
But I digress. I think the start up issue might be another aspect to this. Out of my wheelhouse for sure but if it gives me more ammo? I’ll use it.
I can’t not say this again. Hard drives farming Chia is low power usage. A big hard drive may very well be more power efficient but that doesn’t mean a smaller hard drive is NOT POWER EFFICIENT. They both are. This point is what makes people crabby around here. I’m willing to take the slight power usage penalty and save significant money on hard drives and expand the S out of my farm. My power costs will rise but so will my yield. I will increase my farm with less capital expenditure than you and will yield more coins than you unless you decide to blow your budget further to buy those expensive big capacity drives. So there. (I realize the message won’t see many views but frankly I like to repeat some of this because it’s fact)
Need to lastly say again that if you have high power costs? POW isn’t for you. It might be, but it’s definitely not my idea of a good business venture. Yeah if you have absurd power costs and want to wade into this debate? I’ll take a hard pass on that discussion thanks. Sure, I can see why Chia might be feasible for a possible POW option for some people in that circumstance but I get the need to split hairs on hard drive power consumption. I don’t see anyone hopping into Chia with high power costs and the value being what it is. Maybe the yield would be worth it but I’m glad I’m not having to make those decisions. I can afford to be a bit more reckless with power because it’s not expensive. But what a risk it is dipping into a POW venture if you need to split hairs over power usage on such a minutia level.
Presumably, there is some ideal size for each person…
20TB drives are clearly too expensive but use little power per TB.
500GB are clearly very cheap but use too much power.
There is also the crossover fron 2.5" to 3.5" with a big jump in power and size.
Is the sweet spot there?
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I do agree that there really is not “perfect” one size fits all. Pluses and minuses. I honestly don’t think anyone here has done number crunching on the level that I have in terms of the used market and what’s out there. Sure, every country/region will be slightly different.
I’m not saying everyone can get the same prices on drives that I have been getting. Mr. Personality from the video says that the drives are idle 99.7% of the time or something like that. So we have this thread focus on power which is .3%? Think about this. Even if drives are idle 95% of the time, is it worth bickering over how much worse my 5% is vs. yours? It’s an idiotic talking point if you believe that for the most part while farming, the drives are doing nothing. Yet my smaller drive power consumption is the big flaw. It’s laughable to me. 1mm vs. 3mm. Wow, what a massive size difference. Right?
As I mentioned, I don’t mind being the champion of this. I will show the setup, the cables, the costs, etc. I can guarantee one thing. My 18TB cost a S load less than yours did. All my other component costs included. The only minor adjustment is with figuring out an intelligent storage system which I am already implementing. Hard disks are incredibly versatile with MANY screw holes.
Yes, big drives are more convenient. I’m not disputing that. But if we compete who can build the biggest capacity farm for the lowest capital investment? There is zero chance that you could compete. You can say you are more power efficient and that your farm is more compact, but who cares? I have a bigger farm or if not bigger, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper and far less risk.
This aspect about stop/start and drives spinning is something I need to learn about. I would imagine that it would add to my favor in this discussion. A positive, not a negative. I would like to know how much better (or worse) it is having 10 horses doing light loads than 5 horses (expensive) doing all the work of the 10 horses. Logic says your 5 horses are going to be put down a heck of a lot faster. The dreaded trip behind the barn.
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Unfortunately this is true for notebook drives only. Most enterprise 2.5’’ drives use just as nuch power as a 3.5’’ drive.
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Can you provide a reference? Official FAQ does not mention that as reason for finding a proof without getting a reward.
Including the farmer or only drives?
I am at 220W (including decade old farner and cooling) with 26 drives and 315 TiB.
Including everything except the wifi router. Not plotting or running chia either. Monitor off.
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I would only use smaller drives if they where 2.5"
Have you seen any 18TB drives that were 2.5"
2.5-inch drives are very expensive. No matter new, old, big or small capacity. They would be lovely to use though.
2.5 = little space!!!
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.
Each my HDD has about 50 spin ups every day. Its around 1 mil cycles. so I have around 20 000 days before they will die.
So how about saying thank you for worst advice in this thread?
I should have used this example a 1.0 cu ft microwave uses the same space as a 2.2 cu ft microwave. So a 3.5" 120gb hard disk takes the same space as an 18TB hard disk. Does that work, and the 100TB 3.5" disk is the same size also just super big bucks!!!