securitybreach Posted April 17, 2021 Share Posted April 17, 2021 Well crap Quote With the emergence of the Chia cryptocurrency, miners in China are reportedly frantically snatching up every hard drive and SSD they can find. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, you don't mine Chia with a processor, graphics card or ASIC miner. Instead, you farm Chia with storage space, which is where hard drives or SSDs come in. Chia isn't officially available for trading yet, therefore, it's too early to start hoarding hard drives or SSDs. Unlike Bitcoin, which is based on proof of work, Chia utilizes a proof of space and time model. Chia reportedly arrives as an eco-friendly cryptocurrency. Bram Cohen, who's best known as the inventor of BitTorrent, created Chia to leverage the free space on storage devices. The basis behind Chia is that hard drives and SSDs use less power, are easier to come by and cheaper to purchase. By comparison, mining Ethereum or Bitcoin on a mass scale contributes to the electricity waste. According to HKEPC's report, miners are mass purchasing hard drives that span from 4TB to 18TB in capacity. The panic buying will ultimately lead to a hard drive shortage and price hikes. In Hong Kong, hard drive and SSD pricing is expected to increase between 200 HKD to $600 HKD (~$26 to $77). Due to the constant read and write operations, consumer SSDs aren't the first choice for farming Chia. Nothing is safe from miners when a profit is there to be made though. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/hard-drive-ssd-shortages-imminent-if-new-cryptocurrency-blooms Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 17, 2021 Share Posted April 17, 2021 Certainly not the best of times to be building a new desktop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 17, 2021 Author Share Posted April 17, 2021 Well some of us are always buying harddrives as its a never ending battle with storage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 18, 2021 Share Posted April 18, 2021 The most storage I have is on one of my desktops where there are a 1 TB SSD and a 1TB HDD. I was running low on space with my previous 500 GB SSD so I went to 1 TB. That lets me park a few games and VMs without any issues. The HDD has my docs and downloaded ISOs plus a bunch of digital photos. The total storage so far on this machine is a bit over 600 GB. I also have 1 1TB HDD USB drive attached to backup my data. I am using the old 500GB SSD as a network drive to shuffle files around as needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 18, 2021 Author Share Posted April 18, 2021 I'm up to 24tb on my desktop at about 70% full Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 18, 2021 Author Share Posted April 18, 2021 Ok, not that full but still Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 18, 2021 Share Posted April 18, 2021 Are you storing and streaming movies? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 18, 2021 Author Share Posted April 18, 2021 Possibly.. among other things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 18, 2021 Author Share Posted April 18, 2021 This isn't really that much. A buddy of mine has 86tb but he has a huge family too. And donates his old ones to Reglue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 18, 2021 Author Share Posted April 18, 2021 If he did not donate them to Ken, I could get them from him. He only buys 16tb and up drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted April 18, 2021 Share Posted April 18, 2021 Well aside from my 30,000 or so digital images I don't have that much to store and that is only taking up 81 GB. Hard to imagine 1000 times that much stuff. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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