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My Dell Optiplex which was running Ubuntu 17.10 on a small HDD died this week, so I replaced the whole machine and installed Ubuntu 17.10 on a new SSD drive, thinking it would improve performance. I followed the default partition option with an EFI partition on the SSD. The problem is that several aspects of the system seem slower. Unfortunately I can't quantify it but I get a sense of laggy-ness and generally poor responsiveness (mouse movement, scrolling text files, program load time, etc -- but not only interface responsiveness).

In short, should I simply return to my previous setup? I assumed there would be some benefits running the OS on the SSD. Is it worth the hassle trying to configure things correctly? Sorry if this question is very vague.

Keith
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  • I don't think there's much disk access involved in moving the mouse around. I'd be tempted to look elsewhere for the cause of the speed problem. Was the drive the only thing you changed? –  May 10 '18 at 15:43
  • It seems unlikely that even a cheap SSD would be the cause of increased sluggishness. They are always faster than hard drives. Please give more information such as how much RAM you have. Too little RAM can cause thrashing of the drive, and old SSDs might have to remap blocks as they expire. Have you checked the drive's SMART status? Take a look at the accepted answer here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/528072/how-can-i-check-the-smart-status-of-a-ssd-or-hdd-on-current-versions-of-ubuntu-1 – SDsolar May 10 '18 at 17:27
  • @SDsolar the machine has 8GB of RAM. Again just noting that everything was just out of the box (including the SSD drive) when I installed Ubuntu (and experienced the problems noted above). There isn't any swap usage and it looks like memory usage goes up to 1.5g max even when it's lagging. – Keith May 11 '18 at 18:30

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Mouse movement, scrolling text has nothing to do with the speed of your hard disk. That is all -memory- based.

In short, should I simply return to my previous setup?

That is a question only you can answer.

Is it worth the hassle trying to configure things correctly? Sorry if this question is very vague.

In my opinion: yes, if only for understanding your system better.

In regards to slow responses from mouse and scrolling:

  • Open top in a terminal and have it visible. When the mouse lags or scrolling lags check what the processes are that eat up your resources.
  • Do a memory scan to check if the memory is faulty.
  • Also make a note of all your hardware and see if you can identify any problems there. If, as an example, you have 1Gb in memory you will see performance increase adding 3 or 7 more.
Rinzwind
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