ChiaCoin has now started trading at most crypto-exchanges, with the price settling close to the $600 mark. As a result, SSD and HDD sales have been booming as of late. There are, however, certain risks associated with mining (farming) this new digital currency, most notably with respect to the durability of the hardware employed. According to data received by Fast Technology, mining Chia on a 512GB SSD can kill it within a period of 40 days, and in some cases 50 days at most.
This is pretty concerning as a standard 512GB SSD generally lasts for up to 5 years at the very least for most consumers. While mining Chia, the drive undergoes the same amount of wear and tear in less than two months, writing as much as 256 TB of data during that period. For 1TB SSDs, you can expect a lifespan of just under 3 months and around 6 months for 2 TB drives.
The worse part is since OEMs aren’t offering warranty and replacement to drives that die as a result of mining, most of these are bound to end up in the second-hand market. To the average user, these may look like any standard SSD going for a low price, but in reality, it’ll be multitudes slower than a new one and with very limited life left within.
Considering the relatively high price of ChiaCoin, most miners will be able to more than make up for their losses even before they face them, and the fact that newer TLC and QLC-based drives are quite a bit cheaper than traditional NAND storage means that they won’t be taking that many, to begin with. Of course, this may change if the price of the cryptocurrency drops in the future.
