I’ve recently started farming Chia using a lot of harddisk space. To me it’s the ultimate system administrators crypto coin since it doesn’t use GPUs and there is a lot involved getting it to run quickly and correctly! This post will serve as an accompanying posts to my videos about the subject.

The Videos

First up the videos:

Video one: What is Chia and my USB3 storage setup overview

Video two: Designing a Chia plotting PC

Video three: Select the right NVMe drive for plotting

Video Four: Livestream building a 16 bay + 16 bay external JBOD server

 

Extra Articles

Update Samsung NVMe drives from Linux

How to run lots of USB drives on a single power supply

Recommended hardware to use:

❕ All below links can be affiliate links which provide me with a small kickback in case you purchase something. If you use them, thank you very much! 😀 ❕

🌟 Recommended SSDs for Temp Storage 🌟
👉 Samsung 970Pro 1TB: https://geni.us/1EBm9z
👉 Samsung 980Pro 1TB: https://geni.us/8wT2K
👉 Corsair MP510 960GB: https://geni.us/YtUFpj

🌟 Recommended HDDs for Plot Storage 🌟
👉 Seagate External 10TB+: https://geni.us/gLfL3S
👉 WD External 10TB+: https://geni.us/I4xu

🌟 Accessories 🌟
👉 M.2 cooling heatsinks: https://geni.us/RGAWk
👉 PCIe to M.2 adapter for adding more NVMe drives: https://geni.us/BKXWZ84
👉 Orico USB hubs:
Amazon: https://geni.us/SfQwl
Aliexpress: https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Anh4c3

🌟 Recommended plotter PC Components 🌟
👉 Case – Be Quiet 500DX: https://geni.us/BNNdty
If you are looking for a case that can also mount a lot of HDDs, take a look at the Fractal Design Define 7 XL: https://geni.us/c2DF7fx
👉 Motherboard – Asrock x570 Gaming 4: https://geni.us/Ha6HC
👉 CPU – Ryzen 9 5900x: https://geni.us/gReTaf
👉 Cooler – Scythe Mugen 5 (PCGH): https://geni.us/EOVDBA
👉 Memory – 32GB 3600Mhz: https://geni.us/6G0G
👉 Power Supply – Seasonic 550w: https://geni.us/PAi7cD
👉 Graphics card – NVidia PCIe x1 card: https://geni.us/gbA9Y
👉 Cheapo SSD 128GB: https://geni.us/8SzVfBF

🌟 Mini PCs 🌟
👉 J4125 Gemini Lake Refresh Mini PC (Excellent little machine, configurable up to 16GB of memory!)
Amazon: https://geni.us/Eqt9vR
Aliexpress (the one I have): https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_ACHTKT

👉 Intel 10th Gen i5-10210u Quad-Core Mini PC (Great little machines, less so for plotting, but great as a VM host for instance, configurable up to 32GB of memory!)
Amazon: https://geni.us/UBzUH
Aliexpress: https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_AoixxN

 

Info parts and command-line parts

Here I will add all information and copy&paste command-line parts talked about in the videos.

Tips & Tricks

Update Samsung SSD/NVMe firmware in Linux

Check for the full article here.

Disable Linux “UAS” USB3 Storage driver

I’ve noticed that when using the Linux default “UAS” driver for USB3 storage when there would be prolonged periods of heavy traffic it would stall and timeout some of the drives. By switching to the previously used “USB-Storage” driver this has fully gone away and even allows you to use SMART commands to read out the drive statistics!

For Seagate14TB Backup Plus drives running on Ubuntu 21.04 I perform the following and then do a reboot of the rig:

echo options usb-storage quirks=0bc2:ab38:u | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist_uas_0bc2.conf
sudo update-initramfs -u

I have another machine running Seagate 8TB SMR drives (the 15 drives in this article) and that machine runs Proxmox so Debian and requires slightly different steps and vendor ID:

echo options usb-storage quirks=0bc2:3343:u | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist_uas_0bc23343.conf
echo blacklist uas | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-uas.conf
sudo update-initramfs -u

Check (USB) drive statistics

For reading out smart values such as TB written to a drive or reading it’s temperature install the “smartmontools” package and run a:

sudo apt install smartmontools
sudo smartctl -a /dev/disk/by-id/YOURDISK

Create Aligned partitions, MDADM and XFS for plot temp storage

Aligning your partition, RAID and filesystem is very important to not cause extra wear on your temp plotting SSD!

sudo parted /dev/disk/by-id/NVMEDRIVE --align=optimal --script mklabel gpt mkpart primary xfs 0% 100% set 1 raid on
sudo mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=0 --raid-devices=2 /dev/ (use the part1!)
cat /proc/mdstat
sudo mdadm --detail --scan | sudo tee -a /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo mkfs.xfs /dev/md0
sudo mkdir /mnt/md0
sudo nano /etc/fstab
         /dev/md0        /mnt/md0        xfs    defaults,discard,noatime,nodiratime        0       0
sudo mount -a
sudo chown -R user:user /mnt/md0
mkdir /mnt/md0/chiatemp

Set CPU Governor to Performance

Normally Linux will try and save some power here and there, we don’t want it to do this, especially not on AMD Ryzen platforms!

sudo apt-get install cpufrequtils
sudo nano /etc/default/cpufrequtils
      GOVERNOR="performance"
sudo systemctl restart cpufrequtils
run "cpufreq-info" to check governer

View most used CPU frequencies

Is your system running like you expect it? Let’s see and aggregate all CPU cores and see what Mhz they are running.

sudo watch -n 1 "cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep MHz | sort -n | uniq -cw 13"