Bitcoin Forum

I am looking for some info from anyone who runs windows 10 off usb drives.. i am pricing parts for builds and someone mentioned i should use usb 3.0 drive as the hard drive over a ssd, so i looked into it and found that window 10 does indeed have a windows on the go thing with windows 10, so it acts as a hard drive that is bootable to use as a mobile workstation.. but i was curious if any miners are able to get it working..

Im thinking it will work, i ordered a scandisk 64gb usb 3.0 drive off amazon for $16 to test it on, im thinking it will work because the miner is not causing any writing actions while its running.. so should last for years imo... just wanted some opinions..

No not me.

If you use the Claymore miner, it is better to use 32GB or higher.

not good because some altcoin, need to have a very high page file, like 24 or even 64 in the case of SIB, so it's recommended to have 120gb at least, my rigs are all 120gb, and usb cost more with these kind of space

Its doable but you have to get lucky for it to be worth it.

Basically windows won't boot from storage marked as removable, the workaround is to put the installation inside a vhd and make it boot from there but in that case, you can't have a paging file. No paging file means you need a ton of ram or can't do some algorithms like eth.

There are usb drives that are marked as fixed which work exactly like regular internal ssd's but those are generally way more expensive than similar sized ssd's.

Then finally, there are some usb drives which have modding tools available for their firmware so you can flip the bit and make them appear as fixed disks to windows. That's the part you need luck for though since these kinds of usb sticks are getting more and more rare and at best you'll save $2.

Look everyone here is just guessing without trying.

USB 3.0?
Works good, no problem at all and it's fast. I'm using.
Better be more than 32gb, It's hard to fit 16gb page file and Win10. Money-wise? I can't aswer that, not the topic's point.

Micro SD card reader with class 10 card? I'm using.
Works, no problem, it's so slow that you want to die. Once miner is running, no problem at all. Try to reinstall drivers and will take few hours.

Get an M.2 card.
Ebay

64GB for $30
128GB for $35

No cables, no power. very clean.

OK, thanks guys for the input.. i went ahead and ordered the 64gb usb 3.0 drive off amazon for $16 to test this out.. just trying to figure out the best solution for future NVIDIA mining rigs.. i built my last nvidia rig off a Dell Refurbished workstation i bought off ebay, which has a 4800rpm 750gb drive, but its dog slow to respond to anything, but once its up and mining i see no difference in the actual mining speed compared to my mining rig with the same exact cards and a 128gb ssd.. so was pricing out parts to build future rigs without buying a workstation already assembled.. trying to learn more about selecting parts better for future rigs.. i jumped into the mining scene with no previous knowledge really of building pc's outside of watching others help me assemble pc's in the past.. not a hard task.. just a learning curve for me..

All the algo's i currently mine for with my nvidia cards are non-memory intensive.. so i dont think the pagefile will be an issue in that regards.. if i can get a mining rig up and running on a 64gb memory stick then that is bonus to the pocket..

Crap i forgot all about those....good idea...

Right now im pricing out parts to build my next mining rig, have 5 more GPU's on the way in the mail this upcoming week...currently i have been using Dell Refurbished workstations....that i have been picking up for $150/ea which will run 4 GPU's each....

if any of the seasoned veterans are not busy and maybe could help me pick out some parts that would be cool, i was told i can instead of buying windows 10 for each rig, to just install it and just never activate it and ignore the message it gives to activate it..