Hardware upgrade, best way forward

[xendistar]

I am intending to do some hardware upgrades to my PC over the xmas period and was after a couple of pointer for those who have been there and done that, I am running Debian Testing

Upgrade 1: I intend to fit a SSD in place of the existing 3.5" hard disk which is the current boot disk. I intend to keep at least two conventional hard disks in the PC along with the SSD as the boot disk. As my PC only has Sata 2 I am also getting a Sata3 internal card, I am reliably told that you can boot from drives connected to this card and it works in linux, TBC. What I am after is a good Debian based how to for setting up the SSD, I know about moving high level write files off to conventional disk (swap, /var/log etc.), but I am looking for more information on the setup within Debian.

Upgrade 2: I have a Nvidia GT730 and a AMD RS230, I know neither of them is going to set the world on fire but which one do you think is the best. I also intend to run twin monitors can anybody point me to a good howto for setting up twin monitors please (part of the reason I need to change the graphics card so I can run twin monitors).

So can anybody advise me on a good howto for the SSD and twin monitor setup please

[Bulkley]

A couple of weeks ago I replaced a degrading hard drive with a solid state drive. The first thing I did was backup. If the old drive had been cleaner I would have simply cloned one to the other. Instead I did a fresh install on the SSD, renamed the user account (/home/user/) and copied the original user. Doing it this way brought all my settings with it. Of course, there were some additional programs to install and some adjustments to make but they were minimal. The new setup is working wonderfully and has put new life into an old laptop.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

a good Debian based how to for setting up the SSD

Treat it as you would an old, spinning rust drive. Modern SSDs need no special handling.

You may want to set up `fstrim` under a systemd .timer (I have a guide for that on these boards) but I think this is covered at a hardware level these days.

EDIT: here it is: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=130965

Different I/O schedulers may also improve performance: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Im ... schedulers

I can't really tell the difference though

I know about moving high level write files off to conventional disk (swap, /var/log etc.)

Nope, that is obsolete advice and no longer applies.

Pro tip: always check the date on any guides, technology moves fast

I have a Nvidia GT730 and a AMD RS230, I know neither of them is going to set the world on fire but which one do you think is the best

The AMD card would be a better option under Debian because the NVIDIA card requires a proprietary driver for best performance.