Better of selling your HDD and buy Chia if you want to still be involved, I bought Coin 6 months ago so they are dogs now.
Now GPU mining and at least I can see coin be created at a reasonable rate. I expect a conservative 50% plus returned on money invested.
At least I don’t have to worry about a “Chia person” playing stupid games on Twitter.
I will buy your 6 Chia coins at market rate, DM me 
As someone who invested heavy into equipment the past 2 months I would still say it’s worth it as long as your electrical costs are not out of control.
This will be a bit controversial, but the biggest thing IMO is to not buy junk that most people have moved on from. A newer intel/amd platform should not only get you a more efficient system, but it provides an upgrade path for people that are looking for used systems in the next 3-5 years. It also gives you the option to easily repurpose the machine if you want to grab a couple of GPUs and try GPU mining. Once you start getting into systems that have proprietary power supplies, motherboards etc you are limiting your options. If a motherboard you have your eye on has an option for WiFi and only costs an extra ~$10-$20 or so, I recommend getting it. I don’t recommend using WiFi unless absolutely necessary for this operation, but it doesn’t mean your future potential customer isn’t going to feel the same way and might require it.
I also strongly suggest to look at cases that hold a high number of internal hard drives to avoid wasted costs. It is difficult to get rid of external enclosures, adapters, cables etc and those costs tend to add up quickly. $10-$20 here and there and all of a sudden you are likely looking at about the same price you paid either way. This was my experience in the past with Burst and the calculations came to about the same this time around as well.
The higher upfront cost hurts, but as long as you don’t needlessly buy parts that you don’t need it should protect you on the backside if you are planning to exit. Higher, newer quality parts hold their value much better than the cheap stuff.
External drives tend to not be as high of quality compared to internals, but the positive side is that it provides yet another opportunity for those looking for them. Assuming you shucked the drives and kept things in very clean condition you can turn around and either sell them as internal drives or put them back in the enclosures and sell them that way if you wish. Win-Win.
Also, search for deals on higher capacity drives only. Anything lower than 12TB doesn’t seem to be worth it because your electricity costs will start rising rapidly, again losing any per per TB you “saved” by spending more on your utility bills + extra enclosures/cables to support smaller drives.
14TB externals appear to be the sweet spot at the moment and do recommend those from WD/Seagate as long as the price makes sense. Get aggressive when the flash sales pop up if you are getting into this long term. Think a 50%-60% depreciation over time. If you think you are going to get 80%+ back on your hardware no matter how fast you move you will be sadly mistaken. eBay/Amazon and other online marketplaces tend to take anywhere from a 10%-15% cut right off the top and this is before shipping costs have to be considered.
Keep the boxes of everything in tip top shape to help you move things quicker if you want to move on.
Good luck!
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This is what I don’t like. Chia professes to use up stagnant existing resources. While I’m not debating the validity of your comment I’m just saying the reality is people end up buying new HDD and SSD, chewing through resources and filling the world up with more ewaste.
I have two old machines with many HDD 1-5TB in size on older raid cards. I’m trying to farm in the spirit of Chia’s repurposing old resources. It’s taken me 3 weeks of all my spare time, setting up two machines and trialing different methods of plotting my 8 disk HDD Raid0.
I’m a bit OCD so there is some satisfaction “building” and sticking with it. But I’m immensely frustrated at the same time 
I’m at 60plots ~50c on a pool. Might make my payout threshold for the first time at the end of the month. I’m too afraid to do the energy calc.
It’s an unfortunate reality indeed, but one that I believe people need to be mindful of if they are planning to buy hardware.
Repurposing hardware is an entirely different thing and glad people are helping secure the network that way as well. Pools play a very important role in ensuring that payouts, no matter how slow or “insignificant” they appear now, can grow much larger if this project takes off in the coming years.
I truly believe those who have a long term outlook of ~5+ years will be rewarded for their patience. Bram is being interviewed by Jay Gould in a few hours and it will be interesting to see what kind of response that can bring to Chia. Jay is in circles with some pretty big players, mostly Bitcoin Maxis, but considering Bram’s background I think the interview will go well to get it through to some people that more efforts need to be made to make mining more sustainable. In my world I would love to see a scenario in where SSDs reach the TB/$ parity of hard drives to make the network even cleaner, but baby steps as we first need to get this damn pandemic under control.
The low density HDDs are more for hobbyist than professionnal miners. Still, I expect that in the long run, even very small HDDs will be worth mining on, in the same way old Bitcoin ASIC are today worth mining on. Of course, if you invest to integrate vertically in energy, then the only cost of the drive size is opportunity cost (of the drive’s surrounding equipement). But that’s a whole other kettle of fish! 
no more buying hardware, maybe some more coin later.
I’ve gone GPU mining, instant return on already owned Desktops and Rig just started and to be added on, more options available to me and likely a modest return of 50 % over the year which is good in anybody’s language.
Oh, I also installed a Solar System plus battery which is “encouraged” by Governments where I live.