On 8/10/2013 7:25 PM, Gregory Seidman wrote:
I have a low-cost (i.e. old and refurbished) server at home, but it's
showing indications of impending hardware failure (e.g. the on-board NIC
was being reset automatically every 2 seconds for a while because it was
hanging). As a result, I have purchased a new (old and refurbished)
machine. The difference is that this one has an x86-64 whereas the old one
is 32-bit.
Ideally, I'd like to move the HD from the old one to the new one, boot, and
tell it to upgrade all the packages for the new architecture.
Ask yourself this question: Is the juice worth the squeeze?
In your case the answer is almost certainly NO. Thus I recommend you
simply plug the drive into the new machine and soldier on, saving
yourself the time and potential headaches of such an upgrade. There is
no discernible performance difference between the two with your
workloads. You'll gain nothing from moving to 64 bit but for an
irrational warm fuzzy feeling knowing you have it.
Like many, I suspect that having a 64 bit capable CPU is simply an
overwhelming itch you feel compelled to scratch. Resist that urge, swap
the drive, be happy.