Popular cryptocoin Chia has been wreaking havoc in the hard drive market of late, chewing up all available supplies in some markets as miners – er, farmers – look for capacity to work the crypto algorithms needed for the coin.
It’s been reported that large-capacity hard drives “have virtually gone out of stock in Vietnam”. Large manufacturer Seagate has been trying to adjust to market demand. One expert was quoted as saying “Instead of just wasting electricity, Chia chews through SSDs at a fantastic rate, and also has thoroughly wrecked the market for big HDs.”
Also, the intense use of the drive has driven concern that SSD drives may wear out much quicker than expected, and the excessive workloads could void the warranty. This is deeply concerning in the LowEnd market where dedicated servers are frequently reused and it’s not uncommon to be provisioned a server with a year or two of hard drive wear.
This month, LowEndBox will feature input from our Industry Roundtable members on the impact Chia is having on their business, as well as a quick tutorial later this week on how to examine the drive you’ve been provisioned in your dedicated server.
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Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.
Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.
His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.
You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.
I also recommend checking out the https://utopia-ecosystem.com/ project. For mining crypton, it only requires a PC and an Internet connection. The energy consumption is minimal. So I think it’s a really green coin.