I should probably be posting this to the Steam forums, but
most of the denizens there are Windows people so I might be
better off letting you Debian gurus have a go at it first.
TL;DR: Copying an existing /home into a fresh Debian installation
causes audio in Steam games to glitch - but all other sound is OK.
Full description:
I have a machine in the living room that stores MP3s and videos
and serves them to other machines on our network as well as playing
them locally on our TV's big screen. I also play a few Steam games
(e.g. Portal) on it. It's a 2007-vintage machine, but it has 8GB
of RAM and enough CPU power to do the job, and runs the latest
version of Bookworm.
Recently I decided to upgrade its storage capacity, and replaced
its 500GB hard drive (which was pretty large at the time I bought
it) with a 4TB drive. I did an install from scratch using a
network install CD, then copied my /home partition (using rsync)
from the old drive. Everything works great with one exception:
when I fire up Portal the sound gets glitches about once a second.
This only happens with Steam games; I can play MP3s and videos
with mpv and the sound is perfect, as it is when watching YouTube
videos. If I swap the old drive back in everything is fine.
Obviously my Steam programs and configuration files are in my
home directory, since the updated system comes up icons and all
without re-installing Steam, and can find everything it needs to
run the games. But perhaps there are a few files somewhere else
(/usr?) containing information critical to audio for Steam.
Any ideas?
What are the old and new hard drive model numbers and specs?
If the old hard drive was spinning rust, it is acceptable to replace it with a solid state drive. I did it several times in the past. But nowadays a new machine usually (always?) comes with a SSD, so you usually don't need to upgrade for performance reasons.