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?
--
Chris French

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.

On Tue, 02 Dec 2014 20:08:27 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

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.

Not to keen on the idea of having a SSD for a system drive. They don't
like too many re-writes, do they...

cd wrote:

Not to keen on the idea of having a SSD for a system drive. They don't
like too many re-writes, do they...

But they do wear-levelling, so you can do cumulative writes measured in
tens of TB before they clap out, e.g. Intel were guaranteeing 20GB of
writes every day for 5 years on 80GB and 160GB drives

More recently sizes have gone up, but many non-enterprise drives have
switched from SLC to MLC, the total number of writes may be coming down,
but the product of size*endurance is still on the up ...

On Tuesday, December 2, 2014 8:43:24 PM UTC, cd wrote:
On Tue, 02 Dec 2014 20:08:27 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

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.

Not to keen on the idea of having a SSD for a system drive. They don't
like too many re-writes, do they...

System drive is the best place for an SSD, assuming faster operation is the reason for having one. Recent consumer MLC drives are rated for tens of gigabytes of read/write every day for years; hopefully that should be more than enough for most domestic users.

On 02/12/14 20:43, cd wrote:
On Tue, 02 Dec 2014 20:08:27 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

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.

Not to keen on the idea of having a SSD for a system drive. They don't
like too many re-writes, do they...

system drives don't get too many writes...except log files.


Put /var on a normal disk?

--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 02/12/14 21:05, wrote:
On Tuesday, December 2, 2014 8:43:24 PM UTC, cd wrote:
On Tue, 02 Dec 2014 20:08:27 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

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.

Not to keen on the idea of having a SSD for a system drive. They don't
like too many re-writes, do they...

System drive is the best place for an SSD, assuming faster operation is the reason for having one. Recent consumer MLC drives are rated for tens of gigabytes of read/write every day for years; hopefully that should be more than enough for most domestic users.


Modern SSDs are fine as system drives - Been using them in 2 laptops and
a server for a good couple of years.

In normal use you will not even get to 10% of the wear capacity of a
decent make of SSD (and I mean decent consumer make, not a "super
datacentre SLC costing 1000s).

On 02/12/14 21:29, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 02/12/14 20:43, cd wrote:
On Tue, 02 Dec 2014 20:08:27 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

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.

Not to keen on the idea of having a SSD for a system drive. They don't
like too many re-writes, do they...

system drives don't get too many writes...except log files.


Put /var on a normal disk?


Not remotely necessary

On Tuesday, December 2, 2014 8:43:24 PM UTC, cd wrote:
On Tue, 02 Dec 2014 20:08:27 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

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.

Not to keen on the idea of having a SSD for a system drive. They don't
like too many re-writes, do they...

They are life limited, but the real world life expectancy is beyond any reasonable computer life expectancy. You can happily use ext4 rather than ext2/3.


NT