I have a 2011 MacBook running ubuntu and partial node that I upgraded with 16gb ddr3 ram and a 500gb Samsung 870 ssd about ten years ago. I want to upgrade to a full knots node. I really liked the idea of building the $300 node that Paul posted but parts are all either out of stock or a lot more money now.
I’m trying to decide if I should just try and sell my old Mac or its components (worth maybe $100?) and buy a start9 node or if I should just upgrade the old Mac to 2-4tb ssd and continue with it.
I’ve been a btc stacker for a few years now and own a coldcard q and mk4 but I’ve been nervous about going all in on cold storage. I want to make sure I’m verifying via my own personal node but I’m still just learning and I guess I’m concerned about the vulnerabilities and reliability of my old Mac (it’s also got the original battery which I’m assuming is a legitimate fire hazard by now). I really want to do everything right for myself and my family when it comes storing btc. Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated thanks.
What storage interfaces does it support? (standard SATA, m.2 SATA, or m.2 NVMe?) With the 16GB DDR3 RAM, you will definitely need an SSD (and the faster the better, as you will do a good bit of file swapping during the IBD), unless you are comfortable with waiting a few months for the IBD to complete. I did set up a full node under StartOS on a very similarly spec’d device recently, with a spinning disk just to see, so it is still technically possible (I started it 6 months or so back, and it finished only a couple of weeks ago).
A 2TB SSD is probably going to set you back a couple hundred bucks right now (unfortunately SSDs are in competition with RAM for wafer space at the fabs, so they are also experiencing massive price inflation). But it is a way cheaper option than the “$275 node” (last I checked, now up to $520, haha).
Another option, if you are down for an experiment with a medium-low chance of success (and your device has more than one storage interface), I’ll take on some of the risk if you’d like to try something that is a little outside-the-box. The idea would be to expand your storage horizontally via LVM at the hypervisor level and install StartOS onto that using Proxmox.
If you have two storage interfaces (for example, a standard SATA and a m.2 SATA), then you would get a 1TB SSD for the interface that isn’t currently used, and combine it with your current storage for 1.5TB total (which is plenty to run a node). If it works, you will have spent ~$100-$150 for total capacity of 1.5TB, as opposed to ~$200-$250 for 2TB). If it doesn’t work, I’ll buy the 1TB SSD off you for original cost (if you just pay to ship it to me), so you won’t be out too much (except for time).
I did a little googling on 2011 MacBooks. Is it the MacBook Air or the MacBook Pro? If it is the Air, you are limited to 1 storage device (so my crazy idea wouldn’t work). If it is the Pro, you could replace the optical drive with a 2.5-inch SATA mounting caddy such as this one (adds one more $15 adapter to your cost) and connect a 1TB SATA SSD up that way. Makes the project a little more DIY, so depends on how comfortable you are with this type of work.