As you may know, Chives does not support K32 plot sizes and up, Chives currently only supports K29-K31 plot sizes. Choosing which size to plot depends on a few different factors:
- Plot Size
- Disk Size
- Farm Size/Farmer
Plot Size:
Can I use My K32+ Chia plots?
No, Chives does not support K32+ plot sizes.
Chives supported plot sizes:
K29, Size is 11.5 GiB / 12.348031 GB
K30, Size is 23.8 GiB / 25.5550554 GB
K31, Size is 49.1 GiB / 52.7207236 GB
Temporary "Temp2" [-2] - Total needed RAMDisk space to handle most writes while plotting:
K29 requires 15 GB
K30 requires 28 GB
K31 requires 56 GB
Temporary [-t] - Total needed RAMDisk space for completing an entire plot inside of RAM:
K29 requires 33 GB
K30 requires 65 GB
K31 requires 129 GB
Which plot size is best to use?
Each plot contains N winning numbers. In this example, let's assume K29 contains N numbers, K30 contains 2N numbers, and K31 contains 4N numbers. The more numbers contained in a plot file, the higher the probability of winning. However, plots completing earlier will be available for farming more quickly, but a large amount of smaller plot files can also put a farmer under a heavier load when sweeping the plotted disks later on. K30 is technically the most balanced but if you have a large farm, K31 in my opinion would be the best bet for long-term farming to reduce overall sweeping time on all of the plotted disks.
Disk Size:
Another factor is the disk size, regardless of size I would personally put K31 plots on each disk and fill in the smaller spaces with K30 and K29 plots but if you do not have the luxury of being able to plot K31s quickly, I would recommend the following plot sizes per disk by capacity.
[<5TB] Disk - K29
[<12TB] Disk - K30
[>13TB] Disk - K31
Each HDD is not created equally, some are faster and some are slower. if there is an older drive, it will most likely do better with K30/K31 plots
Size per Farmer
If you are using a high-density farming device, it is recommended to go with a larger plot size so scanning does not get choked up as you don't want your response time to be too high and miss out on potential wins regardless of drive size. Testing is the best way to determine if the hardware is suitable for your drive/plot count.
Please let me know if anyone has any questions, and if any information needs to be updated/added.
Some of this information was gathered by personal experience and the other information was gathered from the Chives Official Discord from Rolex#7512, onegoku#0466, and jatdaluram#1111.