SSD Or HDD: Which Is Better For Mining?
When thinking about cryptocurrency mining, picking the best storage is might not be the priority for everyone. However, it’s great if you consider it too. Because after deciding your choice of the best mining GPU, CPU, and motherboard, you will need fast storage to round up your dedicated mining rig.
There are different storage devices used for mining. The two types of devices are SSD (solid-state drives) and HDD (hard disk drives). Miners use both drives in similar ways. While both have some pros and cons but SSD offers some significant advantages and one of them is faster data accessing capabilities. However, they are not entirely superior then HDDs. Let’s dig a little deeper and find out which is the best.
Before heading to the comparison between SSD and HDD we need to have an understanding of the term SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment). SATA is a storage device interface that connects to the host bus and offers a speed of 150mbps or about. Both SSD and HDD use SATA cables.
Speed –
In terms of speed, HHD can’t max out SATA capabilities as SSD can. The speed limit of SATA III is 550mbps which SSD can easily max out or can even fill up the 3500mbps of PCIe bus. Whereas, HHD can offer only a speed of about 100–120mbps which is considered very less compared to SSD.
Durability –
SSDs are more durable than HDDs, it can endure heavy usage while running continuously 24/7. Though HDD was also found to endure heave usage over the period of a decade it may not be advisable to continuously run this long.
Reliability –
In the beginning, SSDs were not that reliable, there was a known issue that these drives die quite often. Since 2010, SSDs have advanced a lot and changed everything. Soon SSDs proved to become much more reliable over long than HDDs. Even so, a backup is still recommended, because no one knows when an unforeseen condition will damage your device.
Needs and Nuance –
Solo mining has now become a hoax. Earlier it was possible to make a profit with your regular PC, but those days are gone. In recent times, if you want to solo mine, you will require 1000 Mbps or even more.
According to today’s market scenarios, mining in a pool seems much more realistic. A 40 GB of total along with AMD and Nvidia drivers would be sufficient to accomplish this task.
Cost –
Apart from speed and capacity, the cost is also the major factor to consider. We know SSDs cost more but they use less power, keeping your electricity bill down. So if the electricity bill is your major concern, a cheap SSD will offer you more than a low price.
Recommendations –
While keeping all the above factors in mind, we have come up with some nice and efficient SSDs to support your mining operations –
These are a few SSDs that can support your mining all day long and prevent your mining rig from overheating. And if you are looking for hardware for CHIA mining, have a look at our huge collection of storage devices at gear-up.me. We are having a huge collection of SSD, HDD, M.2, and NVMe SSDs available in our store.
