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2021-06-04, 20:47   #34
mackerel

Feb 2016
UK

23×5×11 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by storm5510 The partitioning tools I used wanted to split it into a 2TB partition and a 1TB partition. So, if the 12TB drive I exampled would work with this "farming" process if it was split into six partitions of 2TB each. It seems like a special utility would be needed to get all 12TB into a single partition.
If that was long enough ago, MBR was the common partition format which had capacity limits. This is no longer a limit as GPT has taken over for a long time. If you want a single 12 TB partition, you can. For normal users I don't think there is any reason to use MBR today. Backward compatibility with older OSes/older BIOSes might be about the only scenarios that might be encountered.

Even if you were stuck with multiple 2 TB partitions, it would have minimal impact to Chia farming. It doesn't matter where the data is, as long as it can reach it. You might lose some data capacity from each partition having some overhead for metadata.

 2021-06-07, 00:47 #35 storm5510 Random Account     Aug 2009 1,987 Posts Here is a can of worms, apparently. TB vs. TiB. I have been a Reddit member for several years. There is a "Chia" sub there. Some are insisting that 1 TB is equal to 1000^4 bytes and 1 TiB is 1024^4 bytes. Are they technically correct or have they gone off the rails?
2021-06-07, 03:12   #36
retina
Undefined

"The unspeakable one"
Jun 2006
My evil lair

2·23·137 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by storm5510 TB vs. TiB.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiB

2021-06-08, 05:34   #37
lavalamp

Oct 2007
Manchester, UK

2×3×227 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by storm5510 I did a little research on drives. There are lots of large capacity drives, but not what most participating is this would want. The article I read spoke of 30TB or more. I wondered how they could reach this capacity, then it hit me. RAID. I did some browsing for pre-fab enclosures. I found a few. I suspect there are some DIY racks being built.
There is no need for RAID here, the plots are simple files that can be placed anywhere. Just add a new plot directory and drop some plot files in it on any drive you like, even if that location is across a network.

Since Chia mining does not yet have pools, and given the size of the Chia network, it is not currently feesible to begin plotting unless you have capacity measured in hundreds of TiB and the capability to create many plots very quickly (ie: several beastly servers filled with ex-datacentre SSDs).

The size of the Chia network has historically been growing at 69% / week and currently stands just shy of 20 EiB, so even with storage of 20 TiB, you would account for only a millionth of the network capacity, and have less than a half a percent chance to mine a block in per day. It would take an expected 228 days to mine a block, even if the network did not grow any further.

2021-06-09, 01:12   #38
storm5510
Random Account

Aug 2009

1,987 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by lavalamp There is no need for RAID here, the plots are simple files that can be placed anywhere. Just add a new plot directory and drop some plot files in it on any drive you like, even if that location is across a network. Since Chia mining does not yet have pools, and given the size of the Chia network, it is not currently feesible to begin plotting unless you have capacity measured in hundreds of TiB and the capability to create many plots very quickly (ie: several beastly servers filled with ex-datacentre SSDs). The size of the Chia network has historically been growing at 69% / week and currently stands just shy of 20 EiB, so even with storage of 20 TiB, you would account for only a millionth of the network capacity, and have less than a half a percent chance to mine a block in per day. It would take an expected 228 days to mine a block, even if the network did not grow any further.
Thanks for the feedback!

This is something I was interested in reading about and trying to grasp. I have no desire to do this myself. I try my best to keep up with tech in general and to keep my mind busy, at least, part of the time.

If Chia survives, which is questionable at the moment, the people doing this may find their drives have a much shorter life because of the "pounding," for lack of a better word. One individual I read about is using 39 HDD's and 4 SSD's. I saw this on Reddit with a photo of his setup. It seems a lot of people out there have more money than common sense. It is theirs to burn if they so choose. I nearly forgot: One of their exchanges tried running today but fell on its face, from what I gather.

It may be possible that a lot of the drives being used for this may end up on eBay because of extensive usage. The sellers may want to unload them to buy new ones before they fail. Finding reallocated sectors is a big red flag.

2021-06-09, 04:39   #39
lavalamp

Oct 2007
Manchester, UK

136210 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by storm5510 the people doing this may find their drives have a much shorter life because of the "pounding," for lack of a better word. One individual I read about is using 39 HDD's and 4 SSD's.
Very possible, but only the plotting phase is IO intensive, once complete the plots can be stored on any slow medium, hence the 39 HDDs.

I have seen estimates of 1.2 - 1.8 TiB of writes to create a single k32 plot, approximately 0.1 TiB in size. A typical endurance rating for lower end SSDs is somewhere in the range of 300 drive-writes, so a 1TB consumer SSD drive would be capable of plotting approximately 15 - 25 TiB.

This is why enterprise grade flash drives are desired, for example the 1TB Intel DC P4510 is rated for 1920 drive writes and could plot 100 - 150 TiB. There are also some older MLC enterprise drives around with even higher endurance ratings.

I have also seen an article talking about plotting on spinning rust. Using some older 10k RPM SAS drives at 1 plot / drive, and throwing 24 of them in a system. Each drive is much slower, and has far fewer IOPS, but with so many drives it doesn't matter as the CPU becomes the bottleneck and the drives essentially have infinite endurance.

Of course, scammers abound on eBay, but I have actually had some very good bargins on there. For instance I picked up a couple of sealed 960 GB optane drives, only wish I'd bought more of them. Typically sellers on eBay will quote the drive life and show SMART data if a drive is used, so sellers with good feeback ratings will likely be pretty trust-worthy, even post-Chia-mining-craze.

2021-06-09, 08:00   #40
mackerel

Feb 2016
UK

6708 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by storm5510 It seems a lot of people out there have more money than common sense. It is theirs to burn if they so choose.
At the time I was looking at Chia, it was worth in the ball park of $1000, although today it is close to$550. I was estimating on the magnitude of one hit a year. For the cost of running some old HDs, that's not a bad return. At the time. The network is growing fast. The one hit per year estimate is now one hit in many years. My chances as a small solo miner are practically zero now. Chia is well into the go large or go home phase. Those in it for the long term have to keep growing their farm.

Like all mining, you have to work out possible costs and returns to decide if it is worth it. Ethereum mining remains more stable for the short term.

Quote:
 Originally Posted by lavalamp I have seen estimates of 1.2 - 1.8 TiB of writes to create a single k32 plot
Official site says 1.6-1.8 TiB per plot.
https://www.chia.net/2021/02/22/plotting-basics.html

2021-06-09, 09:16   #41
lavalamp

Oct 2007
Manchester, UK

101010100102 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by mackerel Official site says 1.6-1.8 TiB per plot. https://www.chia.net/2021/02/22/plotting-basics.html
Based on the number of plots and SMART data, my drives are averaging just shy of 1.4 TiB written per plot. Though I am also using 64 buckets instead of the default 128 to reduce reads, I don't know if that affects total written data.

2021-06-09, 13:31   #42
LaurV
Romulan Interpreter

"name field"
Jun 2011
Thailand

24·613 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by storm5510 Here is a can of worms, apparently. TB vs. TiB. I have been a Reddit member for several years. There is a "Chia" sub there. Some are insisting that 1 TB is equal to 1000^4 bytes and 1 TiB is 1024^4 bytes. Are they technically correct or have they gone off the rails?
That is the difference between a real engineer and a real programmer. The first thinks that a kilobyte has 1000 bytes, and the second thinks a kilometer has 1024 meters.

Love the dead horse icon at the end of your question. It fits.

(like, you pose to have no idea if they are correct, but you know very well that this is a can of worms... typical troll).

Last fiddled with by LaurV on 2021-06-09 at 13:33

2021-06-09, 15:40   #43
kriesel

"TF79LL86GIMPS96gpu17"
Mar 2017
US midwest

34×73 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by LaurV That is the difference between a real engineer and a real programmer. The first thinks that a kilobyte has 1000 bytes, and the second thinks a kilometer has 1024 meters.
Real engineers can also program. Those that can't, go into sales or management. That's where the dishonesty of rounding capacities up and measuring displays diagonally to the extremes of the glass or bezel, not the displayed pixels, came from. It's no surprise, that the winners of the rat race are rats.

Last fiddled with by kriesel on 2021-06-09 at 15:42

 2021-06-09, 17:37 #44 lavalamp     Oct 2007 Manchester, UK 2·3·227 Posts I was somewhat hopeful back when we moved into TB class drives that someone might take the marketing initiative and offer "True TB" drives and advertise 10% more capacity over their rivals. Now we're in the days of NAND flash which started out offering capacities such as 64 GB and 128 GB, but seems they have also settled down to offer the same base 10 GBs and TBs and keep the extra cells in reserve to make up for early dead and worn out cells during the lifetime. I suppose it's not too bad as long as you know what you're buying, but still a staggeringly large portion of people believe they're losing more than whole terabytes now due to "ugh, windows formatting just does that."

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