storage gold rush?

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NateS

Active Member
Apr 19, 2021
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Sacramento, CA, US
It really doesn't matter. You go from a 0% annualized failure rate with 0 errors of this type, to 30% with one error, to 60% with more errors. If you want to argue semantics at this point be my guest but you're missing the point. Any drive with more than zero of that type of error should be replaced immediately if you care about the data being stored on it or the uptime of the system it is connected to.
I don't disagree that you should copy any valuable data off of it, and potentially pull it if the machine it's in needs super high uptime. But after that, should you throw it in the trash immediately, or should you take it to the diagnostic bench and see if the errors are truly fatal or not?

The thing is, there's really no "errors of this type" -- all it means is that something went wrong when reading a sector, but that something could be many, many things, some of which are big problems and others which are not. If that's all the information you have, then treating it as having a 30% chance of failure makes sense. But there's some things you can do to get more information, if you have the right tools and skillset. If you don't have the tools or skillset to diagnose it further, and you can't hire someone who does for less than the cost of replacement, then replacing immediately makes sense.

It's a bit like the check engine light coming on in your car -- it could be a blown head gasket, or it could just be that your O2 sensor's wire came loose. It may well be true to say that 30% of cars with a check engine light on will be dead within a year, but it's also true that the majority of them have very little wrong with them. All I'm saying is it can be worth it to take it to a mechanic for a more thorough diagnosis before you take it to the scrapyard (unless it's so old it's not worth much and you were planning to replace it soon anyway).
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
849
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I don't disagree that you should copy any valuable data off of it, and potentially pull it if the machine it's in needs super high uptime. But after that, should you throw it in the trash immediately, or should you take it to the diagnostic bench and see if the errors are truly fatal or not?

The thing is, there's really no "errors of this type" -- all it means is that something went wrong when reading a sector, but that something could be many, many things, some of which are big problems and others which are not. If that's all the information you have, then treating it as having a 30% chance of failure makes sense. But there's some things you can do to get more information, if you have the right tools and skillset. If you don't have the tools or skillset to diagnose it further, and you can't hire someone who does for less than the cost of replacement, then replacing immediately makes sense.

It's a bit like the check engine light coming on in your car -- it could be a blown head gasket, or it could just be that your O2 sensor's wire came loose. It may well be true to say that 30% of cars with a check engine light on will be dead within a year, but it's also true that the majority of them have very little wrong with them. All I'm saying is it can be worth it to take it to a mechanic for a more thorough diagnosis before you take it to the scrapyard (unless it's so old it's not worth much and you were planning to replace it soon anyway).
There are certainly a handful of use cases where you might decide to use it anyway. If it's under warranty, definitely get it replaced. In most environments, and most use cases, it's best to get rid of it one way or another.
 

tinfoil3d

QSFP28
May 11, 2020
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Let me add my humble comment before you actually drown in each other's blood or make some holes to each other's bodies.
I've no idea what pending sectors are(i've only ever saw and heard of reallocated sectors) but years ago I had a SATA HDD with a couple of bad blocks, back at the time I was managing that with "badblocks" tool. The drive in question served me well since then, until it's disappearance in thick cloud of magic smoke coz I inadvertently used a wrong modular PSU cable from another PSU. Not that it's supposed to mean anything, the fact is that I used that to store some movies and music, nobody cares about it. If it dies, so be it, whatever. The risk is there though.
If it's real valuable data, you know, make a backup and retire it for less important things.
No point in making this really complicated. If data is of any value, remount-ro, backup, retire. If not, keep running. Simple.
 

Jellyfish

New Member
Apr 3, 2021
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Any ideas how long this hard drive shortage is going to last? I need to buy 4 x 12TB for a build (not Chia, just a backup server as I'm running out of space). Gutted I didn't buy them a month ago, prices are now almost twice of what they were then.
 

msg7086

Active Member
May 2, 2017
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At least until the netspace gets 50EB, or XCH drops to $50.

Otherwise people would all in all the large capacity drives.
 
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Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
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The current usage for chia is still drop in the bucket, manufacturers will take advantage of the short term price rise but they provide 1000exabyte capacity every year so 50 is nothing. Unless chia prices hit 10K, hard drive prices will not be significantly impacted, IMHO after the current short term demand stops.
 
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tinfoil3d

QSFP28
May 11, 2020
901
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Japan
The funny thing about market shortage of something is that prices don't really tend to get "shorter" as quickly as the shortage is getting "shorter".
But in general, unless pooled mining introduced soon, conditions are getting worse for individual miners now. However as in all crypto, that doesn't necessary stop your average hamster from sending coins to "elon musk" for doubling, in other words, selling their own roof for HDDs.
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
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At the rate netspace is increasing ~8% per day, you could see 10x the space on the network within 30 days. Unless the price of the coin changes more (up or down), this is probably the level at which most miners are discouraged from bringing large amounts of new capacity on the market.

It's also possible you see slower growth, instead of 8% per day, maybe you see a more linear 600PB / day (roughly 8% of current netspace) which brings the network to ~3x its current size within 30 days. At a more linear rate of increase like this you probably see this gold rush continue for 3 months instead of 1 month.

If coin prices fall by half or more, or double or more, this will have some impact on how long the gold rush continues as well.

Anticipated ROI on drives is still pretty close to 1 month right now -- A used 8tb drive costs $200 now (up from $100 at 2 months ago) and 71 plots (which fit on an 8tb drive) is estimated at $171 / mo (ignoring rapidly dropping earnings every day).

I think you see some slowdown in demand with an ROI longer than 4 months, with a steep dropoff in rate of growth once ROI exceeds 10 months.

So basically, Chia needs to be 10 times less profitable before you see something approaching normal levels of hard drive demand again.
 
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funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
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Hah, these delusional kids... As if most newcoming chia miners know what ROI means.
Yeah there will still be some increasing demand at 2 year roi from idiots. But the smart money is not going to be putting millions into this at 10 months ROI.

One reason being, an rtx 3080 can make $250/mo mining eth, and even paying $1500 for one (2x MSRP), that's 6 months or so. If chia earns half that per dollar invested the popularity will drop off sharply. Right now chia earns way more per dollar invested, at least, temporarily.
 

tinfoil3d

QSFP28
May 11, 2020
901
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Ya I know, the thing is, many "mining calculators" even for eth or other well-established coins(sorry ETC!) don't have the 'diffuclity growth' accounted for, so people see wow this is profitable and just dive into it, without any further research. Also because someone said they earned something(which may be totally true).
Also as seen on Gamers Nexus, newer rtx are gonna be capped in mining performance, with special mining-only cards(which, we can be sure of, will get hacked to be used as gaming cards, as in several year old LTT video) sold instead.
All in all it's a crazy time to be in need for hardware...
 
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Michaelding313

New Member
May 18, 2021
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Also there are people who buy normal lottery tickets, chia stil miles ahead just as a lottery ticket printer. Just gotta win a bunch of time in a row hahhaha
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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Cheapest listed price for exos x16 16tb sata is now 150%+, mindfactory.de (my reference for "normal" prices) is now at 252% (758€ as of today vs 301€ from 2021-04-02)
Cheapest list price for this hdd is still ~200% (~600€), but the "usual suspects" are dropping prices and move between 200% and 230% vs 250%+ in the second May week.
 

EasyRhino

Well-Known Member
Aug 6, 2019
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So total storage space living on Chia right now is 20 exabytes. and profitability is quite low. I don't think it's a good idea for anyone to buy storage for it any more.

I think the supply situation is starting to bend in better directions. More drives are at least available right now, even if prices are in the before times.

Incidentally, regarding bad sectors, I had two 4TB drives which showed over 1000 bad sectors each but were still running. I thought "yay chia" and those were the first drives I dedicated to it. Because an individual plot is basically disposable. if it's corrupt just delete and make another.
 
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i386

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Mar 18, 2016
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Cheapest list price for this hdd is still ~200% (~600€), but the "usual suspects" are dropping prices and move between 200% and 230% vs 250%+ in the second May week.
The price for these hdds seems to come down: cheapest list price is 420€ (~130%), normal price is about 558€ (~180%)
 

Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
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Not only that, GPUs are also starting to become more affordable and getting in stock more often.

I still can't choose between a 3090 or a 6900 XT.