Bitcoin Forum

Hi there!
Sorry for the insane/noob question.
As the topic said, laptop mining (i'm using minergate) will kill my laptop's HDD?
Actually i'm asking this because, one of my HDD was dead because of (i don't know) mining?
I didn't even ran any special software than.

Yes it was already asked by someone else on here before.

I would seriously doubt that mining cryptonight based coins would kill your HDD... I'm pretty sure it would be a drain on your PSU, CPU, graphics card,... But i wouldn't know why it would kill your HDD...

I might be mistaking tough.

Laptop mining will kill your hdd, and your graphic card. Laptops are not made for mining, isn't a good idea to mine with a computer, you will mine less satoshis than your electricity waste.

What does hard drive do by the way when the computer is mining altcoins?

AS far as I know its the only Graphic cards, RAM and the power supply that is needed to mine coins. I could be wrong though, I'm no expert but I've previously read about this back then that they're just the ones that will work when mining.  Back when Asics weren't required yet, its the GPUs.

A while back I tried mining with an older Laptop, it worked for a while till the hdd started spinning up faster then overheated, it only turns on and runs spontaneously now.

I would say that Mining wrecked it.

AFAIK You would need to download the whole blockchain first to do any mining and that would require the HDD and it will continue spinning all the while you're mining and it will kill it ultimately I would imagine. But the mining experts can enlighten us better on this.

But OP laptops are not at all made for mining, you're gonna burn up your board first and ruin your lappy and it's not worth it because you won't make anything significant.

I think most people are pool mining nowadays... If you mine in a pool, you don't need to download the full blockchain...

don't worry the hdd will be fine... the gpu/cpu (which will likely burn) are rather far away from the hdd

what about mining with old pcs about to be thrown away?

you would invest hours, and tons of electricity, and make pennies (not even that)

Mining popular altcoin will not make even pennies. Such a waste of time and electricity cost.

Everything about laptop and bitcoing mining is a bad idea.

not sure if it kills your hdd but mining with a laptop is a bad idea.

Eventually it will, best way is to buy a seperate HD for it.

You do not need to download anything other than the mining software when doing pooled mining and solo mining if you host it on another computer.

HDD and SSD aren't too sensitive to heat but they can still kill the drives after operating in high temperatures. In laptops, there are probably no fans directing good amount of airflow to the drives hence heat would kill the drives. They are also located near the CPUs and it is possible that they got overheated.

Mining will do absoloutely nothing to your hard drive unless you use that HDD mining coin...
Everyone always jerks about how retarded it is to mine on laptops and how dangerous it is, but if you've got good ventilation (for example 2 fans, one cpu and one gpu) you should be okay, keep an eye on temperatures

It won't be harmful to your HDD, but keep in mind, unless you get free electricity, if you are mining with your laptop, you are basically mining for the electricity company... cuz of the bills.  :P

If you have a SSD hard drive, reindexing your bitcoin client too many times WILL kill your hard drive.

First you should never mine with laptop.it will damage your laptop badly.Laptops are not designed for mining and second Minergate is a shitty software,you won't make enough!

Because of the heat, same applies to gaming laptops, absurd, because the economic life is cut in a 1/4... Laptops arent build to lose heat quickly, obviously :)

I myself have tried to mine with a laptop and didn't end up well

Yes it will kill your laptop, I advise against using a laptop to mine

At some point, mining will kill anything. It just depends what is, as this defines the life your device will survive. Laptops usually last the shortest time, as they have weak components. The next to die would be PCs, then gaming PCs, then ASICS.

ACIS last the longest as they are specially made for mining bitcoin, e.g the Antminer.