Mining on HDD: features and setup of mining on a hard drive

Mining on HDD
Mining on HDD (hard drive) is the extraction of cryptocurrencies using hard drives - HDD or SSD. The drives consume significantly less electricity, are much less demanding on cooling systems, are relatively inexpensive and are easier to maintain and configure. Hard disk mining occurs through the use of a special Proof-of-Capacity (PoC) consensus algorithm.

It is possible to mine cryptocurrencies such as Burst, Sia and Storj on the HDD. They are little known, but it is possible to exchange these tokens for coins such as Bitcoin or Ethereum without any problems.

• What is HDD mining and how does it work?
• Types of hard drives for cryptocurrency mining
• The best HDDs for mining Toshiba HDWD130EZSTA
• Seagate ST8000 AS0002
• Western Digital WD Red
• Seagate ST10000 VN0004

What is HDD mining and how does it work?

Cryptocurrency mining on a hard drive
Mining on a HDD

is the process of mining cryptocurrencies using hard drives using the Proof-of-Capacity (PoC) algorithm.

This algorithm uses large amounts of physical memory on the user's hard disk drives (HDD) to calculate the hash function. During the search for a block at the first stage, a number of options with a hash sum are stored on the free memory of the hard drive, and at the second stage of mining these options are already applied.

In fact, when mining on a HDD, the software performs a process called plotting - generating volumes of data (PLOTS). The efficiency of mining and its profitability for the user depend on the number of recorded “plots” (which reflect the internal volume of the hard drive).

In Proof-of-Capacity (PoC) itself, such extended versions of the algorithm as Proof-of-Storage (PoS) and Proof-of-Retrievability (PoR) exist and operate. In Proof-of-Storage, the entire volume of the hard drive is used to calculate the user’s income, and in Proof-of-Retrievability, the number of data downloads from the drive is responsible for this indicator.

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The determining factor in the profitability of mining on a HDD is the mining software, which is called a plotting program, the internal volume of the hard drive (it is measured in gigabytes) and the data transfer speed - the internal memory buffer of the hard drive is responsible for it.

It should be noted here that in terms of internal capacity, HDD (hard disc drive) drives are the leaders, while in terms of information transfer speed, SSDs and solid-state drives are the undisputed leaders.

Types of hard drives for cryptocurrency mining

Hard drives for mining cryptocurrencies
There are two types of hard drives for mining cryptocurrencies:

• HDD;
• SSD.

HDD-type hard drives, based on magnetic platter technology with a read head, are a long-standing standard for storing information in digital form and have been on the computer components market for a very long time, known for their reliability and sophisticated technology. At the same time, their data transfer speed is low and has long been limited by technology limitations.

SSD drives appeared on the computer components market relatively recently, but immediately established themselves as uncompromising solutions in terms of information transfer speed and reliability, due to the absence of moving parts.

However, SSDs have a significant drawback

— limited number of information records in the internal volume. That is, the more intensively information is rewritten on a solid-state drive such as an SSD, that is, the hard drive will quickly exhaust the limited number of write cycles and begin to operate in read-only mode (it can only read already written information, but not write new data to the disk).

Storj Price Forecast: Market Opinions

Bitcoin gets all the press these days, but STORJ is a consistent performer in the powerful crypto market. With more computing power and more data, Storj's price forecasts are predicted with incredible accuracy. Here are some data-driven predictions for predicting STORJ prices.

Investor in the wall

To begin with, WalletInvestor provides plenty of superlatives to support the idea that STORJ could soon reach new highs north of $2.6 by the end of Q2 2022. This is important given that STORJ is already consolidating significant efforts to break through the significant resistance level at $1.8. Thus, by the end of the year, STORJ could fluctuate around $2.

Trade Beast

Forecast site TradingBeast is collaborating with the same forecast, listing STORJ as a good buy for crypto investors. TradingBeast offers a flattering forecast that STORJ could rise to $3 by the start of Q3 2022. However, the forecast also cautions investors against gloomy days leading up to the end of 2022 ahead of improved performance in 2022.

CoinQuora

According to CoinQuora, investors have more than enough reasons to remain optimistic about the future of STORJ. This is a price forecast of $3.16 for one year. This forecast is within the threshold of doubling investors' profits. Equally optimistic is the idea that STORJ's price forecast could end this year on a profitable note, reaching $2.50 and just in time to raise rates to $2.96 by mid-2022.

Government capital

Now that there's a buzz around decentralized storage, the government plans for Storj to have a bearish run, but it's a passing cloud. The forecast calls for a trading price of $1.8 by the end of the year, but the price could more than triple in 5 years. Based on the key indicators examined here, the uptrend will not continue at key resistance levels. This is what government capital says about the price forecast in Storzh.

Digital coin

Likewise, DigitalCoin examined data on Storj's trading patterns and determined that the asset's price has been in an upward trend over the past year. However, the future price of STORJ is predicted to be $1.18 by the end of the month. This means that the asset price could rise to $2.23 based on technical analysis.

The overall sentiment on Storj in the cryptocurrency community is bullish. For starters, Jady, a renowned analyst, has been working on Storj for a long time. Jady is targeting $110 for the long term but is awaiting confirmation at the stochastic RSI crossover signaling a strong uptrend. However, ProjectSyndicate takes the opposite view, suggesting traders close positions at the resistance level. Based on the $1.4 sell-off point, ProjectSyndicate projects STORJ could fall to 0.71.

The best HDDs for mining

How to choose a HDD for mining
The best HDDs for mining can be determined by the following parameters:

• The amount of internal memory of the drive;
• Spindle speed;
• Buffer size in the controller.

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The amount of internal memory clearly regulates the level of profitability of mining on a hard drive, because the more memory, the higher the income.

The spindle rotation speed is directly responsible for the speed of data transfer from the hard drive platters to the interface. For ordinary models it is approximately equal to 7200 rpm. But there were also specialized Western Digital Raptor series hard drive models with spindle speeds of 10,000 and even 15,000 rpm, known for their high performance.

The volume of the memory buffer in the internal drive controller regulates the amount of data that will be available to the system immediately, without accessing the internal storage; this is, so to speak, the RAM of the hard drive.

Below we will briefly describe the best HDDs for cryptocurrency mining.

Toshiba HDWD130EZSTA

Characteristics:

Internal memory capacity: 3 TB.

Spindle speed: 7200 rpm.

Buffer capacity: 64 MB.

Cost: $80.

Seagate ST8000 AS0002

Characteristics:

Internal memory capacity: 8 TB.

Spindle speed: 7200 rpm.

Buffer capacity: 256 MB.

Cost: $230.

Western Digital WD Red

Characteristics:

Internal memory capacity: 6 TB.

Spindle speed: 7200 rpm.

Buffer capacity: 64 MB.

Cost: $250.

Seagate ST10000 VN0004

Characteristics:

Internal memory capacity: 10 TB.

Spindle speed: 7200 rpm.

Buffer capacity: 256 MB.

Cost: $345.

What cryptocurrencies can be mined on HDD

Cryptocurrency mining on HDD
Using mining on HDD, you can mine three cryptocurrencies:

• Burst;
• Sia;
• Storj.

Sia

To mine Siacoin on a HDD, the user needs to rent out the internal volume of their drives to other users and companies, with the obligatory condition of constant access (the drives must be constantly online).

The user himself sets the price for renting his volumes, but specifying a price higher than the standard one, as a rule, leads to a drop in interest among clients.

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Read the full article: SiaCoin (SC) cryptocurrency: rate, price, wallet and prospects

Storj

Cryptocurrency Storj
In the case of Storj, the main emphasis is on the confidentiality and security of client data, and the user will receive coins not only for the amount of memory used, but also for the number of accesses and downloads of information from the drive.

Mining Storj has its own characteristics:

• The storage capacity must be more than 500 GB;
• The user must have a wallet that supports Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens;
• Mandatory static IP address;
• Correctly configured port forwarding on the network equipment used (router);
• Time synchronization;
• Installed Storj share software.

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Read the full article: Storj cryptocurrency: review, price and prospects

Burstcoin (Burst)

Burstcoin (Burst) is the internal cryptocurrency of the Burstcoin blockchain platform of the same name. Burstcoin uses the Proof-of-Capacity (PoC) consensus algorithm and its mining is more efficient the higher the spindle speed of the hard drive. The spindle rotation speed refers to the number of revolutions of the magnetic plates of the hard drive per minute.

The internal coin of this platform, Burstcoin, can easily be exchanged for such popular cryptocurrencies as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Also, the Burstcoin platform has support for smart contract technology, and invites users to participate in auctions for the sale and purchase of any property, both real and virtual.

Storj Price Forecasting | Introduction

An in-depth analysis of technical and fundamental factors will help us determine an accurate Storj price forecast for 2021-2022. Customers are increasingly wary of putting all their eggs in one basket, which is where Storj brings its vision of a decentralized cloud storage infrastructure to the table.

As of this writing, Storj prices are hovering north of $1.51. This gives Storj an impressive market capitalization of $483,348,516, according to data available on CoinMarketCap. This places Storj among the top ten decentralized cloud storage hyperscalers.

The Sturge is running like clockwork towards new all-time highs through the end of 2022. If you're looking for a reason to invest so early, look no further than this Storj price forecast.

How to mine on a hard drive

Mining process on HDD

How to mine Burst

First, the user needs to download software to set up mining on the HDD and the corresponding cryptocurrency wallet.

You also need to download the latest version of the Java framework from the Internet and install it on your PC.

You need to place the archives with software for setting up mining on the HDD in the root section (folder) of the exact drive that you decided to use for mining.

Initiate run.bat

.

Use the file with the link Burst_Wallet.url

or enter this address in the search bar of your browser
https://localhost:8125/
.

Create a new account in the Burst Wallet page that appears and be sure to write down the seed phrase - it is secret and must be saved. The user will need a secret phrase for unhindered access to the token storage; it would be best to save it in the passphrases.txt

, which is located in the same folder as the mining software configuration files.

You need to run the executable file called run_dump_address.bat

and it will create your unique account number in the
address.txt
.

Edit run_generate.bat

in accordance with the instructions.

Run run_generate.bat

and watch how the plots are generated.

As soon as the generation of plots is completed, you need to configure and run run_mine.bat

.

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After all these steps, if you see messages like “Error reading file” in the console, don’t worry, this error only indicates that not all plot blocks have been generated.

It is quite possible to mine the Burst cryptocurrency as part of a mining pool, as the complexity of the network increases and mining alone becomes less and less profitable.

How to mine Sia

Mining Sia on HDD
The mining algorithm for Sia cryptocurrency on HDD is as follows:

1. To start mining the Sia coin, you need to download and install the Sia Coin Wallet program.
2. After this, you need to download the blockchain archive with files to synchronize Sia Coin Wallet. For best performance, you should download the consensus.db file from the Sia platform and upload it to the directory located at C\Sia-UI\sia\consensus
   .
3. After creating a wallet, you need to save the private key and password and get the address.
4. After this, you need to purchase 2000 Sia tokens - they will be needed to register an account on the platform of the same name. At the end, you must indicate the size of the hard drive (only drives from 35 GB are accepted).

How to mine Storj

To successfully earn Storj tokens, the user will need to follow short instructions:

1. It is necessary to indicate to the platform the path to the drive with which the user will mine tokens.
2. Create a dynamic domain name in DynDNS format.
3. Create a forwarding port.
4. Specify the address of a wallet that supports Ethereum cryptocurrency.

Storage Node Dashboard principle

If there is a need to restart the service with the node, you can use the PowerShell command “Restart-Service storagenode”.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Hard Disk Mining

Advantages of mining on HDD
Mining on a hard drive requires much less financial investment because:

Storage devices such as HDDs or SSDs (solid-state drives) are much cheaper than specialized devices such as ASICs or video cards.

The user does not need to purchase expensive motherboard models with a large number of connectors for a video card.

Mining on hard drives does not require special efficiency from the cooling system and the removal of hot air from the room.

Plotting consumes much less electricity compared to traditional mining on ASIC or video cards.

The user does not have to have a deep understanding of equipment setup and maintenance.

The disadvantages of mining on a hard drive include the following:

You can mine only three cryptocurrencies.

Weak demand for hard drives that have been in use, unlike ASICs and video cards.

High load on hard drives leads to their premature failure.

START

To run, you need to run the following command:

docker run -d --restart unless-stopped -p 28967:28967 \ -p 127.0.0.1:14002:14002 \ -e WALLET=»0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX» \ -e EMAIL=» [email protected] » \ -e ADDRESS=»domain .ddns.net:28967″ \ -e BANDWIDTH=”20TB” \ -e STORAGE=”2TB” \ —mount type=bind,source=””,destination=/app/identity \ —mount type=bind,source= "",destination=/app/config \ —name storagenode storjlabs/storagenode:beta

Here you need to change WALLET, EMAIL, ADDRESS, BANDWIDTH, STORAGE, identity-dir and storage-dir and replace them with your parameters.