Chia Miners Resell Used SSDs as Brand New Amidst Coin Plummet

[AleksandarK]

The Chia coin, often dubbed Green Bitcoin, is a project that promised to be a green alternative to all of the previous attempts at creating a coin that can be mined. Using the Proof of Space (PoS) technique requires massive storage space and Chia plotting can destroy modern SSDs in a matter of weeks. However, the green disputes have been questioned widely, and the Chia coin is not considered so much of a green alternative anymore. From its peak of $1645, it has tumbled down by over 80% of that and it is now worth around $281 at the time of writing.

As these prices have declined a lot, miners are starting to look away from the coin and have started to resell their hardware. This massive SSD and HDD reselling has started to obtain new funds for miners to move to another alternative cryptocurrency. In the awe of this, some miners are rebranding their worn-out and used SSDs as brand new, and selling them in China advertising new conditions. As Chia plotting tends to destroy SSDs, it is only a matter of time before these "brand new" drives start failing. After China, we could see other markets flooded with these drives as well, so it is always best to be cautious with your purchase.


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[Space Lynx]

can't say I am surprised.

 

[Post Nut Clairvoyance]

Yep, that's some serious PoS technique alright. Completely expected though.
Chinese enthusiast community will be onto this. Hopefully they can warn enough people about suspicious shops and items, and bleed these people dry.

 

[lexluthermiester]

This isn't only low-life type of behaviour, it's just simple and blatant crime.

so it is always best to be cautious with your purchase.

I would not buy unless the there is a money back guarantee through the selling platform or transaction service.

 

[Palindrome]

Not surprised, just disappointed..

 

[Metroid]

And concerning ssd's, is a lot lot lot more damaging than a gpu, second market ssd's are dead because of this scamcoin, before you buy you will have to check how long does the ssd still has to function properly, even as a simple virtual memory can obliterate a ssd, imagine plotting ehhe

 

[b4psm4m]

Anyone who is seriously plotting now is using the madmax plotter, or similar. This allows you to take over 70 percent load away from the Ssd and point the writes towards ram. Admittedly, you do need at least 128gb of ram to do this. Systems with 256gb of ram can plot entirely to a ram drive, doing away with the need for an ssd altogether

 

[piloponth]

Just don't buy second-hand SSDs, simple as that.
However, if e-shops are in this together with miners, then that is just a plain scam.

 

[Hyderz]

buy from reputable sites or visit your local pc store... but i have a suspicion this will be only be in china..

 

[lexluthermiester]

Just don't buy second-hand SSDs, simple as that.
However, if e-shops are in this together with miners, then that is just a plain scam.

That's not great advice, however...

buy from reputable sites or visit your local pc store... but i have a suspicion this will be only be in china..

...this is.

 

[ZoneDymo]

car for sale, used to belong to a grandmother, spend most of its life in the garage

 

[Jism]

I know it was possible with traditional, HDD"s to reprogram it's Smart values. I have'nt bin into that game for quite a while, but whats the status on SSD's?

 

[Space Lynx]

car for sale, used to belong to a grandmother, spend most of its life in the garage

wth? I'm confused.

 

[Tardian]

Expensive is cheap in the long run.

Mina Sinclair

 

[Broken Processor]

So definitely buyer beware, If bought new I'd definitely check its life left state when home and when buying used I always ask for a disk health report if they refuse or don't reply I don't buy.

 

[Metroid]

Anyone who is seriously plotting now is using the madmax plotter, or similar. This allows you to take over 70 percent load away from the Ssd and point the writes towards ram. Admittedly, you do need at least 128gb of ram to do this. Systems with 256gb of ram can plot entirely to a ram drive, doing away with the need for an ssd altogether

Not worth the trouble, plus imagine having to plot every ssd and each consuming at least 100gb of memory ram. I myself was not expecting its price to get up to almost 1300 usd, I guess the hype is over and who bought it at 1300 is in pain, who knows when it will get back up at that price, I mean bitcoin cash in 2018 got as high as 4500 usd and look at the price now, is around 600 usd, so who bought bitcoin cash in 2018 to this day lost a lot, bch never got back the price it was in 2018, many coins are just pump and dump and most, 90%, never get as high as they were once pumped.

 

[Chrispy_]

And concerning ssd's, is a lot lot lot more damaging than a gpu, second market ssd's are dead because of this scamcoin, before you buy you will have to check how long does the ssd still has to function properly, even as a simple virtual memory can obliterate a ssd, imagine plotting ehhe

This.

Chia absolutely annihilates SSDs and I wouldn't touch an ex-Chia staking SSD with a ten foot pole.

ETH mining is far less stressful for a graphics card. Most of them run underclocked and in temperature-controlled, well-cooled environments. While its true that the VRAM is getting heavy use, it's a constant 100% load at a steady temperature so it should have very low impact on the lifespan of the RAM and I'd gladly buy ex-mining cards when they eventually appear on the market. Since keeping the cards cool is important for ETH mining, the worst-case scenario is that the fans have been run at 70% or more for 24/7 operation, but replacing fans is both cheap and easy: https://www.gpufanreplacement.com/

 

[Tardian]

This.

Chia absolutely annihilates SSDs and I wouldn't touch an ex-Chia staking SSD with a ten foot pole.

ETH mining is far less stressful for a graphics card. Most of them run underclocked and in temperature-controlled, well-cooled environments. While its true that the VRAM is getting heavy use, it's a constant 100% load at a steady temperature so it should have very low impact on the lifespan of the RAM and I'd gladly buy ex-mining cards when they eventually appear on the market. Since keeping the cards cool is important for ETH mining, the worst-case scenario is that the fans have been run at 70% or more for 24/7 operation, but replacing fans is both cheap and easy: https://www.gpufanreplacement.com/

Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Cards from the above may be OK if only used in winter.

 

[b4psm4m]

If you look at the below you can mitigate 75% of the damage done to an SSD if you have 128GB of ram, if you have 256GB of ram then there is no need for an SSD to plot. However, it is still not profitable to farm at this time at the 100GB plots must be stored on a mech hdd. that is active at all times. This could change in the future though.

<tmpdir> needs about 220 GiB space, it will handle about 25% of all writes. (Examples: './', '/mnt/tmp/')
<tmpdir2> needs about 110 GiB space and ideally is a RAM drive, it will handle about 75% of all writes.
Combined (tmpdir + tmpdir2) peak disk usage is less than 256 GiB.

 

[ZoneDymo]

wth? I'm confused.

It's a joke that is always brought up regarding secondhand car sales, where the seller's makes those claims.
These sellers trying to sell there beat to hell storage drives as new reminded me of it.

 

[Dyatlov A]

Hard disk sentinel will tell the condition of the ssd and hard drives. As i know those wears cannot be manipulated, so how can they sell a worn out ssd as new?

 

[Lnxepique]

Does anyone know how easily the wear level counts or total bytes written are manipulated?

 

[Jism]

Hard disk sentinel will tell the condition of the ssd and hard drives. As i know those wears cannot be manipulated, so how can they sell a worn out ssd as new?

Most of the readouts is just based on the drive's Smart Status or values. If a miner is able to reset it he's pretty much able to reset the drive like it's brand new from factory, or at least put in a logical read/write history, rather then abused to the bone.

But it's complicated, you dont do it that easy.

 

[P4-630]

Just buy your new hardware from reputable stores, and perhaps avoid amazon on this and for sure avoid buying from china, that's obvious.

 

[Totally]

How is Chia green in any sense of the word if in addition to consuming energy albeit significantly less generates significant amounts out e-waste.