Quote from: Cobra98 on May 08, 2016, 10:21:12 PM

Got another mining question for the experts!

Is there an advantage or disadvantage to plotting small chunks on larger drives versus one large plot taking up the whole drive?

I have a couple 2TB drives but only have 1 large plot on each taking up the whole drive but unable to use the plot optimizer due to no space now that I found that it increases speed by 15-20mb/s. Is there any speed or deadline difference if u have a 2TB plot versus 2 1TB's or even 4 500gb's using a single drive? I'd like to ideally have 1 drive just to plot say 500gb plots then optimize them and move them to larger drives filling them up with the smaller chunks of plots.

Hope my question makes sense and someone knows the answer and can help me squeeze the most out of my small 8tb setup, thanks!

the advantage with the larger file is that it probably is the fastest option. More files will be a tiny bit slower, but as long as it's only like 30 files or so, it should barely be measureable, overhead is just the opening and closing of more files in the operating system.

The advantages of smaller files are several.

with smaller files, a disk error that make a bit unreadable will potentially make the entire huge file bad for reading.. With smaller files, you could rename the file with the "hole" in it, and keep mining the rest until the disk finally breaks down for good

also, with smaller files, it is easier to rearrange things. I have some drives that has both burst stuff and other stuff, and when other stuff needs more space, i just move a 250GB burst file to some other drive with more space. If i had made files in teraby sizes, it would be harder to adjust to other needs. Now i can increase or decrease the burt usage of any drive in 250GB steps (as most of my files are that size)

i create batch files to create my plot files, and keep a spreadsheet to keep track of what is where. With more files you will have more administration, keeping track of what nonces you have plotted and where they are. ( don't remember how many drives i have with burst plots, but it is probably 20 to 30 drives on 3 pcs - the spreadsheet remembers what and where for me )