Getting Started: Chia Crypto Mining on Windows 10 (Proxmox)

Chia, that is the name of the new and extremely popular cryptocurrency that leverages hard drive space instead of computational power derived from CPU’s and GPU’s.

My current system specs are Intel i5 running Proxmox, 32GB RAM Total, 1TB Samsung 980 EVO SSD and Windows 10 running in a VM. The Processor has 4 cores so I have allocated 3 cores and 12GB of RAM to the Windows 10 VM. I have a total of 21TB of Western Digital RED Drives in various sizes. It takes me about 10-12 hours to create 1 plot but now i am creating two plots in parallel.

Part 1 – Installation

Download the software from chia.net

When you open the software you will be presented with the screen below. This is where the software will create a mnemonic for you which is called your seed. This seed must be kept safe, email it yourself or even better use a password manager that has a save notes feature, I recommend Bitwarden, it is open source, fully encrypted and for all the home lab lovers out there like me you can run it on your own servers.

Now the chia software is open i’ll go through the different pages and explain briefly the different features and what each part does.

Click next to start generating your seed. This could take a few seconds, sometimes it crashes. Just restart the software.

Despite what the software says about typing down your key now you really don’t have to because as soon as your wallet is generated you can copy and paste all the information you need. I will show you shortly how you can do that.

The next screen you will see will be the main page, it shows you the information regarding your node and how much it has synced.

The next tab down on the left is where you will be able to do transactions as soon as you have earned XCH.

The next window shows you your plots and this is where you will create your plots.

This is where we will start the creation of plots that will eventually go into our farms. Plots are sections of space on the hard drive that are filled with temporary files while the plot is created. Once your plot is complete it will delete the temporary files and create the final plot, preferably on a mechanical drive.

Plots come in different sizes but generally, it is advised to stick to a size of K-32 which requires 239GB of temporary space and 101.4GB of final space to create. The temporary space should be on an SSD if possible and the final space can be on any hard drive, even external USB drives. An SSD drive is not a requirement, you can create plots and farms on the same hard drive if you wish.

When your plots have been created you will have all the information you need about your farm and plots.

The next window is where your keys are stored and can be displayed by clicking the keys tab and then selecting the eye icon. Remember I said don’t worry about writing down the seed? This is why because we can easily copy and paste it.

Clicking the eye icon will bring up your seed. Use CTRL+C to copy it to somewhere safe.

Now you can copy it anywhere you like without having to type it all down. As said before, the safety of these words and the order matters.

That concludes part 1 of the installation of Chia. In part 2 i will be explaining the process of creating your farm and plots.

My name is Darren and i am a hobbyist/homelab/crypto user. If you liked this post please consider signing up for a Digital Ocean account using my link and you will receive $100 in free credit!

XCH: xch1hrumdza9u6slw5hz343p3yh954wvjs4rqnqdkq6huanctf0vytzqqkahxk
BTC: 1BVwmPMt6kxRe88EKhThJviFp3M4MhubTA
ETH: 0xa958d40518d76168BB795947Bf96AafD6bccc177
LTC: MBJdCsnZXDuXBYme6Ur7VFAeYw4LTFM9CP
BAT: 0xab574A09fFf2aa391658D3D048265ad1401cA7AF
DOGE: DBCchyovcTXSioWM392kKydJxY5nyECYFB
SCP: 9f2feed9f29f3f8035e4ae2a33837ae4affa0a5b5773bcc5a33a4abb041e82e2cccb318c78ef