Cryptocurrency CHIO can destroy an SSD in 40 days
Chia is positioned as an ecological alternative to Bitcoin relative to energy consumption. It's not mining, but farming on your storage solution. Its greener credentials seem questionable. Not only are we starting to see signs of HDD and SSD shortages, but it also greatly shortens the lifespan of these drives.
Chia has the peculiarity that it is not mined using the power of the GPU but rather utilizing the storage device used, where obviously the faster the better performance is obtained. This has already caused a shortage of SSDs and hard drives in Asia, but now other symptoms of their use are beginning to be seen: the durability of SSDs is depleted in just weeks.
While manufacturers are already seeing an increase in sales, some, including Galax, are warning buyers that using their products to grow Chia will void warranties. According to the Chinese site Fast Technology (via Hardware Times ), constantly growing Chia on a 512GB SSD, which typically lasts for five to ten years, can see it lifespan being reduced to just 40 days.
Drives with more storage space last longer, but wear and tear still significantly reduce their lifespan - a 1TB SSD lasts around 80 days, while growing Chia will kill a 2TB SSD in 160 days. Unfortunately, we don't know what NAND writing type is applied though, but assume TLC-based SSDs, as these are the norm.
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Senior Member
Posts: 116
Joined: 2007-02-20
no? mining on storage devices uses many terabytes of writing, writing many times over the hard drive. The TBW is accurate. Mining with chia just writes beyond the TBW of SSD's warranty. I could imagine manufacturers also creating new warranty terms for sales past X date that gigabytes written per hour will be taken into account too so if there are excessive amount of writes over a short period, warranty is void (already possible since SSD SMART records power on time and how much GB written)
Senior Member
Posts: 612
Joined: 2015-05-03
I still don't get why SSDs die, when they have no moving parts, it makes no sense
Senior Member
Posts: 612
Joined: 2015-05-03
And there it is: if RAM doesn't die, no matter the amount of read/writes, why do SSDs? Deliberate degradation built in to promote more consumerism?
Senior Member
Posts: 1346
Joined: 2006-07-06
This is two different technology. RAM doesn't retain data after the power is off. SSDs must retain data when the power is off. Over time the more you write to it they eventually lose that capacity to retain data. I think RAM use capacitors and SSDs transistors.
Senior Member
Posts: 1346
Joined: 2006-07-06
We really need regulations for cryptocurrency. I don't know in which world our leaders live and what they are smoking but cryptoconcurrency despite what the advocates say and want us to believe is a big problem and will be an ever bigger one moving forward unless we regulate (or the bubble somehow burst by itself). Computers are not only used for gaming despite what lot of people think. They are used for lot of crucial works like medical research, banking, design, science, ... lot of those use cases actually require a powerful GPU.
It's not that big of a problem for now because people/companies already have computers and they don't necessarily have to upgrade now but if it keeps being the way it is now for another 20 years this will become a very big problem. I guess our leaders will regulate once they made lot of money with cryptocurrency and multiplied their assets by big multiplier (they are all already rich). Prople should stop drinking the advocates kool aid. The ideas behind cryptocurrency is good. But the current execution is atrocious and not sustainable long term and definitely 100% must be regulated.