Mining 12 hours/day: is it possible?

[Lionel]

In order to generate bitcoin, do i need to run the miner 24h/24 or i can run it for only 12 hours/day?

I suspect that when i plug off the miner, i'm interrupting the calculation in the middle and i can't resume it when i plug it on again, it will restart from the beginning.

[gmaxwell]

No, no effort is conserved when mining so none is lost when you turn it off. You do need continual connectivity to the network, but there is no need to mine 24/7. You'll just earn proportionally less.  Though if you have costly mining hardware it might be wise to locate it someplace where you can mine 24/7!

[eleuthria]

In order to generate bitcoin, do i need to run the miner 24h/24 or i can run it for only 12 hours/day?

I suspect that when i plug off the miner, i'm interrupting the calculation in the middle and i can't resume it when i plug it on again, it will restart from the beginning.

A miner is doing millions/billions of calculations per second (1 MHash/sec = 1,000,000 hashes per second).  Bitcoin has no concept of progress or state, each hash is an independent chance to win, just like a random lottery ticket.  So yes, while you will "interrupt" the calculation, what you'd interrupt is a single hash, which takes a millionth of a second or less to compute.  No significant loss.

[tom_o]

In order to generate bitcoin, do i need to run the miner 24h/24 or i can run it for only 12 hours/day?

I suspect that when i plug off the miner, i'm interrupting the calculation in the middle and i can't resume it when i plug it on again, it will restart from the beginning.

If you run it for 24 hours you get twice as many, that's the only real concern.

[vehementchrome]

It might be more risky if you're solo mining, versus mining with a pool.

[crazyates]

Check out CGWatcher. It monitors CGMiner, and has a nice feature where you can set a schedule. It will automatically open CGMiner at a certain time, and shut it off at another certain time.

[dell123]

Out of curiosity why would you want to mine for 12hrs instead of 24 in a day? Hardware isn't cheap so I would imagine you'd want the highest return possible on your investment?

[ensign_lee]

He prob just wants it to run while he's not at home and then to stop once he is.

[ReCat]

Yes, it'll work just fine. Make sure you are using a pool.