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78 sats \ 5 replies \ @nullcount 7 Nov 2023 \ parent \ on: Would you still run a Full BTC Node if the blockchain is too big ? bitcoin
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.
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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