Farming Setup for an old iMac

Chia Farming & Harvesting
1

I started plotting and farming about 5 weeks ago from my old 2012 iMac with external SSD’s connected to USB as well as WD Elements HDD’s for farming (connected USB and power cable).

As it’s been growing I’ve just bought more WD 14/16TB hard drives for farming but I’m at 4-5 of these devices now (plugged into the wall and connected via USB to the old iMac). Constantly adding more USB connected drives all connected to a power source doesn’t seem ideal.

I feel like I need a better setup to this and I’ve been looking into NAS systems (Maybe 5 x 18TB) for the iMac but I’m looking for some guidance on any better solutions for this given my farming system being an old computer mac.

Thanks!

Ben

2

Shuck your drives from their enclosures and put them into something like this (this is the one I have):

4 Likes
3

@dchuk what kind of speeds are you seeing when transferring to the Yottamaster? Currently watching my 101GBs plot get bottlenecked at 42 MBps (WD Elements AIO drive) which takes 30 minutes each.

wd-elements-plot-transfer-speed

4

I’ll second what @dchuk recommended. AVOID that NAS life, just ask @codinghorror :tractor:

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image3024×545 369 KB

this is with a very similar enclosure:

I like that you can just “plop” bare drives into it, you’re paying a $60 premium on the yottamaster for the convenience

1 Like
5

I honestly haven’t measured really from the plotter running directly on the machine.

When sneakernetting plots from an external nvme to the external yottamaster, each plot takes about 7-8 minutes.

I did order the usb 3.1 version btw, which should be much faster than the 3.0 version

6

Sounds like a noticeable improvement. I ordered a 3.1 this morning. My plan is to fill it over the USB-C bus and once it’s full, move the drives to a standard USB enclosure for farming and plot more over the faster 3.1.

1 Like