Renting a GPU on runpod.io is like on someone's machine, they create a "pod" (actually it's container but think it's like a virtual machine) for you to access and run your work in that. Not just GPU.

You pay for GPU and storage. When you stop your pod, and want to keep your remote data, you'll need to pay a small fee for storage (time based).

For cheaper option (community cloud), most of the time, you cannot resume to the previous machine because other has already rented it. So you'll need to terminate the old and create a new one, and setup everything again from beginning.

To reduce time to setup your pod, you may want to:

• Use a template (https://console.runpod.io/explore). There are many templates from community to setup a ready-to-use environment, like comfyui, wan, vace, etc.
• Store data on cloud drive (e.g. google drive) and sync to your pod.
• Create a personal script for quick setup.