270 sats \ 7 replies \ @nullcount 7 Nov 2023 \ on: Would you still run a Full BTC Node if the blockchain is too big ? bitcoin
A used 1TB HDD is $15 USD and falling.
At current block height, 815727, it takes approx 500 GB to store the chain.
If every block was 4MB from now on, it would take 125,000 blocks to fill the remaining space on the 1TB drive.
More likely, blocks will average 2MB so 250,000 blocks should still be able to fit on the 1TB drive.
So it will take about 2.5 - 5 years to fill a 1TB drive.
By then, a 2TB HDD might cost $15.
Why would one buy used HDD nowadays? It's like buying used GPU that has been used for shitcoin mining before.
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Because the blocks and chainstate can be re-downloaded/indexed if there is a disk failure. Also, you can run multiple HDDs in a RAID to add redundancy. Blockchain is a great use for old drives. Writing to drives causes more wear than reading. With blockchain data, you're mostly reading and only writing the new blocks. So it generally is easy on a HDD, compared to running an OS which is always writing and rewriting data.
Maybe don't store your keys, or LN node data on a used HDD tho.
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Why use HDD at all? SSDs nowadays are cheap, faster and more reliable.
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1TB HDD is minimum requirement to run a node. SSD is superior. But SSD is more expensive.
For the price of a 1TB SSD, you could buy 4x used 1TB HDDs and run a RAID 10 on them. Then, you'd have 2TB of usable space. One drive can fail and you still have data integrity. And the speed is doubled. So if each HDD does 100MB/s, your RAID 10 does, 200MB/s. Which is about the same speed as a bottom-tier SSD.
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No, it's not the same speed, ATA SSD goes above 500 MB/s and NVMe goes even faster.
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You're right about that but for keeping the full blockchain the read/write speed of HDDs is fully sufficient.
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Yes, it kinda is, have done that in the past, but decided to move over to SSD only after cat at home made physicial attack on Bitcoin by accidentally trying to destroy it. :) Two SSDs in a mirror seems the best solution to me (I also run Lightning node there).
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