On 02/12/14 18:10, Chris French wrote:
Ok, got a new larger capacity SSD to replace the old Crucial M4 64GB
(almost 2 years old) one in a laptop. No problems, just an upgrade, and
releases the M4 one for use elsewhere.

Now yes, I'm sure the best thing is to install Windows 7 afresh, but
I've got better things to do right now. So, go to use Acronis True Image
to clone the old drive onto the new drive. Part way through it complains
of bad sectors on the old drive and that it can't copy them. give it
another go, same again.

Try to run chkdsk on it (like I would do with a mechanical HDD) but
doesn't seem to do anything.

So decide that on the basis that it was working fine before, tell
Acronis to ignore the dodgy sectors, it completes the clone fine, and
the machine boots and runs fine.

I'm not really sure about the ins and outs of SSD's - but AIUI they
don't really have sectors like a HDD, but they 'pretend' to for the
purposes of talking to the rest of the computer, and dodgy bits of the
SSD are mapped out by the formware. So I'm wondering what acronis was
complaining of? should I have done something to fix it? should I be
trying to RMA the old SSD?

They do have blocks - just like disks, which no longer have "sectors" as
such.

Either way, you've hit bad blocks which will not read - and you've
forced the software to skip them. That's all you can do. You've done the
best you can do...

Run chkdsk on the result to fix up any problems and you'll be OK.