Hello. I come here to ask some basic noob questions i watched some tutorials and read bunch of articles about Chia and mining it and there is still something i can’t understand. So i think i understand concept of proof of space and i would be able to run raspberry pi 4 with 2x 8tb Seagate HDD for mining and portable USB Samsung 1tb HDD for plotting (i would use my lappy with 12 core Ryzen 5 5500U and 32gb ram) This is what I can afford at this time (it would cost me around 350$) but before i end up investing that little amount i got saved i want clear picture what this form of mining is about. (At first i was scouting asci rigs but prices are nuts) ok so getting to the point: i buy pi and HDD s setup chia wallet do some plotting an 1tb HDD i have and data gets transfered to 2x 8tb HDDs, It mines from there and then what? Does this 16tb eventually gets filled and i have to erase it and start over? Or it rewrites automatically? Or there is 3rd option, it stays filled and mine it until HDD die? Or maybe something else entirely. Also do I need plotting all the time or just untill i fill available space on mining HDD?
Thanks in advance for answers and hope u guys can understand what i mean because my English isn’t very good
That is the neat part, you can absolutely free up your laptop for other projects when you are not plotting; let that Pi chug along farming those plots you have made. Good luck on the project, and feel free ask around if you get stuck.
yeah im aware of that. will take around 10 months to get single chia (probably more becouse its harder to farm every month) however in long run i will try and add more space to get better results. Plus i believe that crypto market overall is on the low at this point so hoping that in couple of years chia along with other coins will get in more value
I want to ask about pools too. How does that work excaly, what makes it worth joining instead of just farming alone? and does the fee apply up front and its billed monthly or it takes share upon withdrawal?
edit:// i just thought of another question. Does it matter what type/model of hdd i use for farm? Im aiming to buy Seagate ST8000NM01J 8TB refurbrished by producer. I choose this one becouse it got 8TB space and its cheapest i could find. However i saw some recommendations what to buy as for hdd and just wonder if it kind got any impact on harvesting time?
It is especially worth it when you only have a small farm, like the one you are planning. You can see Chia as working kind of like a lottery. The plots you have are your lottery tickets. Every day lots are drawn and maybe you win. If your chance to win is low, it may take a very long time before you get any reward at all (or it might come on day one depending on your luck). Over time the luck equals out of course. But especially with a small farm the difference based on luck can be rather large.
A pool on the other hand will give you steady rewards based on your contribution to the pool. The fees are really low, they get deducted from the payout your get. For a setup your size, I would strongly recommend joining a pool.
Make sure than when you plot, you use the newer plot format that can be used with a pool using the official protocol. These plots should have a contract_address when you make them. Commonly referred to as NFT plots. You make an NFT first using the Chia client and that will give you the contract address to use when making the plots.
So when i enter my storage in chiacalculator it say on average i get 0.2 xch / month does that mean i will get it no matter my luck and got small chance of ‘winning’ more or is it best value i can get with that storage volume and if im out of luck i get nothing?
make sure your usb ssd is minimum usb 3.1 connected to ur laptop. as well as its connection to however your spinning your drives.
** some basics
plotting process:
setup wallet on laptop (you dont need to sync to the blockchain at this point)
plug in usb hard drives and usb ssd into laptop (don’t use a hub for this process)
plot a couple plots, one every 20 min or so (find rhythm to where your not overloading the ssd)
do this until the hard drives are completely full (few weeks)
then the farming process:
setup that same wallet using ur key you have from your laptop, on pi ubuntu with nice gui.
forward some ports on your router.
sync the entire blockchain (takes a week at best)
then
plug hard drives into the pi and mount, point chia at it and begin *farming (using a hub for this is fine)
join a pool.
IMO don’t solo farm with 16 tb. or your chances of winning are close to nill… your drives could die before you ever saw a chia. or ur just incredibly lucky and win a few times… to each thier own. this is the game we play.
thanks that really helps but im gonna use portable hdd for plotting since i dont have ssd on hand. guess that will impact speed of plotting but thats ok.
Well only thing left to do is order hardware and get this thing working thank you all for answers, all of them were really helpful.
In a pool, you will get +/- 87,5% of that number on a regular basis, regardless of your luck.
12,5% will always be a matter of luck, or just long enough time period.
Not in a pool, 100% is up to luck, you might get 0 for years before you hit a reward.
If you’re going to plot to hdd plotting 16tb is gonna take like a Month maybe even 2. Dunno really haven’t tested in a long time. But when I did it was on a z3 raid with 10 disks. With ssd caches n logs… And plot times were still just atrocious.
It won’t matter that you have a nice laptop if you drive your plotting on is a slow hard drive.
Js.
Hilarious topic and replies. I would just say people who have been doing this from the start, what do they know about starting out on this? They’re so far removed. I don’t think there’s a lot of insight. I personally would wait until this compression in GPU stuff gets sorted out. All of the information that’s out there right now you might as well just throw it away. It’s useless, misleading garbage. Aside from that, everything’s great!
There is also another way to go about this: use the 350 to just buy Chia (XCH) coins. This way you will have 9 coins or so, that will take you 6 years to farm with that setup.
Personally I like having hardware, it is more dependable in (resell) value but purely financially it makes more sense right now to just buy the coins.
Also, keep in mind rewards will go down by 50% in about a year from now.
i watched some tutorials and read bunch of articles about Chia and mining it and there is still something i can’t understand. So i think i understand concept of proof of space and i would be able to run raspberry pi 4 with 2x 8tb Seagate HDD for mining and portable USB Samsung 1tb HDD for plotting (i would use my lappy with 12 core Ryzen 5 5500U and 32gb ram) This is what I can afford at this time (it would cost me around 350$) but before i end up investing that little amount i got saved i want clear picture what this form of mining is about. (At first i was scouting asci rigs but prices are nuts) ok so getting to the point: i buy pi and HDD s setup chia wallet do some plotting an 1tb HDD i have and data gets transfered to 2x 8tb HDDs, It mines from there and then what? Does this 16tb eventually gets filled and i have to erase it and start over? Or it rewrites automatically? Or there is 3rd option, it stays filled and mine it until HDD die? Or maybe something else entirely. Also do I need plotting all the time or just untill i fill available space on mining HDD?