HDD PROOF OF CAPACITY MINING, IS IT VIABLE?

HDD Mining is now possible through a coin called Burstcoin. While there are methods of mining Burstcoin using PoW methods, BurstCoin is meant to be mined using a unique proof of capacity algorithm.
Prior to mining, miners generate segments of data known as plots that are saved to the hard-drive. The more plots stored; the faster a miner can mine. With every unsolved block, the miner’s hard-drive will search through the saved plots to estimate a timeframe for which it can mine a block if that block has not been found. Once the hard-drive reads through the plots, it will sit idly until the block can be solved. In theory, this means that HDD mining is incredibly power efficient and can be safely done on a laptop, unlike PoW mining.
Disclaimer: The author has no holdings in Burstcoin, nor has he ever personally mined Burstcoin.
The Burstcoin wallet is a web-based java wallet that requires some java knowledge to setup. The setup instructions are fairly vague, and a lot of people have been having troubles setting up everything they will need to mine. Miners will need to edit. BAT and SH files with specific perimeters that are not well documented. Generating the plots requires both significant HDD space, and time. To generate plots for a 2 TB hard-drive, the process could take up to 24 hours based on your computer’s hardware. HDD Mining with less than 1 TB at this point probably isn’t worth it.

This post was published at Crypto Coins News on October 30, 2014.