Sunday, May 9th 2021
Chia Farming Already Causing SSDs to Fail at Scale, Storage Device Shortages on the Horizon
Chia, the new crypto-currency that relies on storage as proof-of-work to obtain, rather than processing power, is already causing widespread failures of storage devices that have a finite write endurance, according a report by Chinese tech publication MyDrivers. We've detailed how Chia farming works in an older article. Farming it (i.e. participating in the network that keeps the crypto-currency running, in exchange for the currency itself), takes a toll on your storage device. NAND flash-based devices, such as SSDs and USB flash drives, can be re-written a finite number of times, described by manufacturers as "write endurance" and expressed as TBW (terabytes written), or DWPD (drive writes per day, a unit in which drive size is accounted for).
MyDrivers notes that Chia farmers in China are noticing that typical 256 GB SSDs barely last through 40 drive-write days, 80 days for 512 GB, and about 160 days for 1 TB. Endurance varies among the various SSD brands, and NAND flash type used. Since disk space, and not drive performance is paramount in farming Chia, and magnetic storage devices such as HDDs offer more re-writing, stocks of high-capacity HDDs, including those typically headed to the NVR and security surveilance markets, are being soaked up by Chia farmers.
Source:
MyDrivers
MyDrivers notes that Chia farmers in China are noticing that typical 256 GB SSDs barely last through 40 drive-write days, 80 days for 512 GB, and about 160 days for 1 TB. Endurance varies among the various SSD brands, and NAND flash type used. Since disk space, and not drive performance is paramount in farming Chia, and magnetic storage devices such as HDDs offer more re-writing, stocks of high-capacity HDDs, including those typically headed to the NVR and security surveilance markets, are being soaked up by Chia farmers.
35 Comments on Chia Farming Already Causing SSDs to Fail at Scale, Storage Device Shortages on the Horizon
Even RAM has limits and you can bet it too would be worked to death in short order.
With DDR3 you could make a case, but you'd need a very beefy server from that era (DL580 G7, for example) to even fit that much memory since DDR3 was limited to 32GB per DIMM, so you'd need 32+ DIMM slots.
The power cost, noise, initial cost (a DL580 g7 used is like $1000+ and the memory is ~$2500) and cooling required makes this an infeasible option unless you get most of the stuff for free since it's so old.
I have seen some people test AWS for this (renting a server in the cloud) but they found it was barely profitable or not profitable depending on the value of Chia. It never seemed like a good idea at least.Where do you reckon that? According to coinbase it's almost back to where it launched since it tanked. It was in the $1200 range on the 30th, tanked to $600 over the course of the following week, but now it's back at $1125.
edit: weird phrasing
They got a special place in hell, their lives are not only worthless, but they're a literal virus on this planet.
In addition to the other bad practices, it’s probably not a good idea to turn on a 12 bay NAS on a rotating platform and then start moving (rotating) the NAS.
Hopefully this bull run is brief given how hard it is to mine now.