Steps needed for non-techie

[wareson]

Hello all! Keen to get involved, host a plot, and get farming! Have a good spec of laptop but read guidance about using different drive to the one housing the OS plus don't have enough space. What are some good options on external hard drives that I could hook up for the purpose? (replies with links would be amazing - UK-based but sure I could find vendors so any and all appreciated)

[hoffmang9]

This is a good place to start - https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain/wiki/Reference-Plotting-Hardware

[wareson]

Thank you. Seems to have good info for desktops. Before embarking on a desktop build, I'm trying to work out if my gaming laptop with external hard drive could be 'useful' from TiB/day perspective and if so what external hard drive I'd have to hook up?

[dorkmo]

you'll have to read the spec's but just look for an external ssd with fast usb, and an external hard disk with lots of TB. its not going to be as fast as plotting on an M.2 board connected to the motherboard, but laptops typically only have one M.2 slot and its for the boot drive, and you dont want to plot on the boot drive.

[mmmarcus]

@dorkmo can you please give an example of those two products so I could try it out with my laptop?
If I understand it right I would need an external NVMe SSD drive with at least 1 TB, and then another external drive with loads of TB to transfer it to?