Sad story of an SSD upgrade gone horribly wrong

Hi Guys,
Not looking for help on this one, too late for that I'm afraid; just sharing the story with you to ease my frustration.
I had long planned to upgrade my laptop (Asus N56VM) to an SSD.  The plan was to get a deal on an SSD, clone it, install it in the main drive and put the old HDD into a caddy and use that to replace the DVD drive.  I waited until the last Black Friday came round and I was excited to see a Crucial 750GB SSD come up for just over £100 - a great deal and my project began!
I had checked out YouTube videos and everything looked very simple for my particular laptop and so it was.  I cloned the HDD using Acronis (came with the SSD) and inserted it into the laptop, everything seemed fine for about 2 or 3 minutes before I hit THE PROBLEM.  For no apparent reason everything stopped working; after checking the Task Manager I could see that Disk Usage had gone to 100% and just stayed there.  I could see no reason for this, but after trawling Google, I found potential solutions - there were a lot of possibilities.  To cut a long story short, I tried all sorts of solutions during which I had to reinstall HDD and SSD multiple times in order to try different things.  It was after one of these installations that I lost the motherboard!  I don't know whether it was a static discharge or something else, but the CPU cooked itself and I lost my laptop.  I had to pay £50 for the laptop repair company to diagnose that the machine could not be repaired and they helpfully told me that SSD installations are frequently problematic ("unless you have a very clean HDD").  It is not possible to get a new, replacement mobo.
I had been really happy with my laptop - it had 8GB (plenty for me), a 4-core i7 and 4 USB3 ports, it even looked good!  I now have a replacement Asus X556U and I was quite excited by the fact that it had the latest 7th gen i7.  Unfortunately it only has 1 USB3 and 1 USB2, but I bought a hub so I thought it wouldn't be a problem.
I find myself rather underwhelmed by the new laptop compared to the old.  It's considerably less well made and handsome, the i7 turns out to only be dual core and I think using a USB hub could be a problem after all - my audio interface doesn't like it so has to have it's own port, now there's only one left.  Finally, Sonar Platinum is giving me pops, clicks and audio dropouts - on a brand new machine!  I won't go into details on this, I will start a new thread if I need help.  I appreciate that I have to work through potential solutions first.  Just feeling very frustrated, sad and annoyed!

Sometimes hardware finally dies when you start to mess with it. If it was an HP I wouldn't be surprised.

abacab
My thoughts on laptops are that they are disposable consumer items.  Not really meant to be user serviceable, full of proprietary components, and difficult to access and replace parts.  I would use one as a mobile DAW maybe, or as a secondary, but not as my main workstation.
 
I think that for the money you would spend on a high end laptop for audio, you could build a really sweet desktop DAW.  In a few years time you could keep up to date by just dropping in a future motherboard and CPU, and keep going with the same case, power supply, and drives.
 
One thing I have also noticed about the Intel Core CPU's for mobile, is that they are usually cut down 2 core versions due to heat and power consumption issues.  They also throttle down and go into economy mode.  And  often the BIOS won't even give you access to many options that you might see in a desktop mobo.

 The portability thing lasted about 2 weeks for me.  That was with an iPad.  I can do everything on it but I prefer to use it as a Kindle or Web streaming on the patio. I have an iTrack Solo, one of those IK things to use your guitar and various mini Midi controllers that I now use for a desktop.
 Most of my laptops are hand me downs and the modern day cell phone is just as powerful. They are HP and I call them craptops.
 One person referred them to as shiny new ornaments to show off at Starbucks.

I have a laptop that I can use for "on site" recordings.  But, its basically used like a multi track tape recorder.  Whatever is recorder is transferred to my desktop DAW for any processing. 
 
But, that doesn't negate the user's problems.  Replacing the hard drive with an SSD is a good idea.  The other part of the motherboard failing can be logged to "Murphy's Law" (anything that can fail will).

Hi Guys,
Thanks for all the interesting comments.  Just to clarify, I still have a working SSD, it was just the mobo that failed, but unfortunately it can't be replaced so the laptop is toast!  Interestingly, it was a 4-core i7 and I wonder whether cooling issues contributed to the problem.  The new one is only a 2 core, but seems quite speedy and it is 4 generations more recent - kaby lake vs ivy bridge, it seems to run a lot cooler.  
 
I never experienced a static discharge and I always disconnected and removed the battery before taking the cover off, but I presume there may have been a static discharge sufficient to kill the mobo without me knowing it.  Maybe just Murphy's Law as was said above.
 
I was very interested to hear about taking an image and restoring it onto the SSD rather than cloning it.  I'd never heard that before; just goes to show I should have consulted you guys first!  I had some very interesting advice from the chap at the laptop repair shop regarding the new laptop:- don't install the SSD until the warranty runs out.  The warranty is really valuable and totally void if you've done any upgrades.  He also said to be somewhat cautious of putting the HDD in a caddy and into the optical drawer, that it doesn't cause cooling problems.
 
I certainly get your comments about having a desktop machine rather than a laptop for DAW work.  However, I am not a power user by any stretch of the imagination, I do need the laptop for other things and it does need to be portable.  Maybe one day we'll buy a house with lots of rooms and I can have a studio room to myself and then have the desktop option ... haha, maybe!  You have made me feel quite defensive about laptops though and I feel I should point out that my machine is no slouch and way above the minimum spec.  I did have problems with pops and audio dropouts to begin with but since then I've stopped plugging the audio interface into the USB hub and worked my way through Cakewalk's PC Optimisation Guide.  Specifically, disabled wifi and bluetooth devices, also USB hub power management option (I only knew about the first of those previously).  Things are much better now but time will tell!  Does anyone know if it's possible to have a macro to switch these things on and off with a single click, rather than doing them all manually?
 
Since my first post, I have discovered that I have another USB port and I didn't realise it!  It's a USB 3.1 Type-C and apparently it's a speedy little beast.  I didn't notice it before because it has a different connector, but it could be very useful in future; I understand that it will transfer more than 1GB per second!  That will get external backups done in a hurry and I can also think about maybe using it for sample libraries too.
 
Anyway, for the time being I am feeling a lot better and I have gone through the process of removing unnecessary junk from the new laptop so am feeling like I have quite a streamlined machine now.  Thanks for all the comments guys!

Thanks for the advice Alexey.  I'm away from home at the moment but when I get back I will get onto it.

Thanks Cactus, that's good to know.  I can certainly see the benefits of a fresh install, my only concern is the amount of time it takes to reload everything - it took about 48 hours this time round.  Although my broadband speed is sufficient to watch a film, it still takes a long time to download Sonar.  Then I've got Komplete 9U, which is initially loaded from disk, but then needs comprehensive updates downloaded.  On the other hand, it would avoid the hassle of trying to decide what's bloatware and can be deleted, and what's essential ...

Kev999

SGodfrey
...the amount of time it takes to reload everything - it took about 48 hours this time round.  Although my broadband speed is sufficient to watch a film, it still takes a long time to download Sonar.  Then I've got Komplete 9U, which is initially loaded from disk, but then needs comprehensive updates downloaded...

 
I never download anything more than once if I can help it. I save a copy of every instalation file. I also keep a backup copy of all my multisamples. Reinstalling those is just one big copy & paste.

Another good suggestion, thanks Kev.  Although by the time I come round to my next rebuild there'll probably be more updates, so there will still need to be some substantial downloading.

SSDs can draw large power spikes and this takes out electronics not specifically designed for it.
 

"I wish Sonar CCC would have "install all purchased" and "update all purchased" buttons"

Like this you mean?

jpetersen
SSDs can draw large power spikes and this takes out electronics not specifically designed for it.

Any reference for this statement?
I have not heard about that aspect before, even from colleagues which use SSD raids (32+ SSDs in one rack). I have plans to replace some of my old raids with SSDs.

I found it's best to leave SSD OS drive migration to the pros. Cloning can be disastrous on many levels. My cloning mishap was revived using an OS image file after cloning completely ruined everything.

Cactus Music
That doesn't work. There was a thread about it. 
It only updates all of what ever tab is open.  
The joke was it should be called "Update Some Stuff" 
 
But relevant to the OT and CCC. 
 
All you need to do is download once to one computer. The CCC download folder can easily be copied and moved to the new machine. When you run the CCC from the new machine it will not have to download those files again unless something was out of date. It will use those files to install everything. 
 
And as said above most smart people keep all software download files on a back up drive. 
Sure it takes a bit of time to get everything up and running but it's not like your chained to the chair. I will always be doing something else,, even reading a book or cooking dinner while the slower programs install. 
I also recommend re booting after a few installs have completed. Many ask for this but even the ones that don't it cannot hurt. 
 
You can put that laptop up on Ebay, you'd be surprised what someone might pay for it. Like I have 2 laptops right now that parts would be nice to have. One the keyboard is shot, another was dropped and the case is cracked.  
 
What exactly was the laptop? 
 

Hi Johnny,
It was an Asus N56VM and it was great - quad core i7, 8GB, 2xUSB2, 2xUSB3 - best laptop I ever had.  It even looked good and changing the hard drive (and RAM) was really simple, it was just getting it to work afterwards that drove me nuts and eventually led to it's demise.  I also got it for an absolute steal of a price.
I think you're right about ebay, I've taken out the hard drive and the blu-ray drive, but there's plenty in there that could be used for spares.