Comment by agogdog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by agogdog | Hacker News Reader

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That was already known, it's an included spec when you're buying an SSD and already written into the warranties... this is an additional warning for this use case:

>“If users use our SSDs for mining/farming and other abnormal operations, the data writing volume is much higher than the standard for daily use, and the SSD will slow down or get damaged due to excessive data writing volume. Due to the tests carried out, the damages are qualitative according to the test results, and that is why according to the quality assurance standards of our SSDs, we have the right to refuse to provide warranty services. The right of final interpretation belongs to the company."

They're specifically calling out "standard for daily use"...

One alternative explanation is that maybe farmers were just wearing them out quickly and playing naive to claim the warranty?

Most SSDs aren't designed for the repeated writing Chia requires. "Data center" or "high-endurance" SSDs have that capacity but are consequently more expensive.

>One alternative explanation is that maybe farmers were just wearing them out quickly and playing naive to claim the warranty?

That's exactly what they were doing. If you use a low cost "consumer" SSD you can wear it out very quickly then claim it was "defective."

> Most SSDs aren't designed for the repeated writing Chia requires.

It doesn't require all that many writes. Problems come from a conscious decision to use a small number of SSDs as scratch space for a very large array.

Is that a false claim?

The expectation that an SSD or even SD-card is infinitely rewriteable (practically speaking) is implicit in the marketing.

The idea that a drive can't be rewritten too many times should be explicit (like SMR HDDs)

Every SSD spec sheet has a Total Bytes Written (TBW) spec and Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD) and many warranties say that they don't cover wearout beyond those specs. It's akin to a tire rated for 50,000 miles; if it fails beyond that it's not defective.

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