do you have to have the plots in order, like on my first harddrive i have 1-7200000 and started my second harddrive 72000001-144000000
turns out my first harddrive is only 80% full, how would i plot the other 20 percent, could i put 144000001-160000000 on the first one?
It doesn't matter what numbers you use at all. The number is just a variable in the encryption process. For instance it would take your account number + 1, then account + 2, etc. It takes the values from the <starting nonce> and goes for as long as you tell it to in the next argument <number of plots>. Each output is completely random so you could do account number + 50238 or account number +10000000000 and you'll get just as random a plot as you would with + 4 and + 5.
That's why you don't ever want any overlapping hashes - it always uses the same information + the nonce value. If you two plots both starting at 1 and doing to 1000000, you each plot will calculate your account number + 1, +2, etc so both plots will have the same values and you can't submit a value twice.
I did my first hard drive starting at 1. Second drive started at 100,000,000. Third at 200,000,000. And so forth. It's way overkill, I could probably do increments of 20,000,000 but since the value of the number doesn't matter, it doesn't matter - I'm not going to run out of numbers.
Just don't use the same numbers twice, ever. Other than that, it has no effect whatsoever what numbers you use, they absolutely do
not need to be sequential.