Copied windows install with DD, windows is filled with errors

So my dad got an SSD, and I took it over to my computer and copied the old drive onto the ssd, now when I did it DD reported errors coming from the disk which was being read, and it would abort, now after that I just had it ignore the errors, and it coppied all the data, however when I started windows, all the applications are broken, how do I get the drive to copy perfectly?

Back when I moved drives I used clonezilla. I think it uses DD underneath as well (there are multiple modes though), but it worked fine for me (not an SSD though).

Just to clarify, the old drive is still fine right?

Yeah, the old drive is fine, it's just slow as balls, I don't know why DD would report errors, but it is from almost a decade ago, and this is my dead grandfather's, so I am inclined to believe that their was some file corruption, I think if I try to boot it in safe mode, or get the the screen where you can select diagnostics (I spend my time on linux, I wish I knew more tecnical knowledge about windows, could someone point me in a direction, or just the name and or command) and attempt to get the file system to function, but I might try to copy it by another means.

Mh depends on the windows version... Windows 10 needs to boot into the login screen before you can boot into troubleshooting mode (which totally doesn't make any sense, but they had to). On anything older you can go into Troubleshooting mode via F10(?) I think, not sure about the exact key.

But even if there was file corruption, as far as I understand DD wouldn't care, since DD doesn't even know about files, it just knows sectors right? Is the sector size on the HDD and the SSD the same? I don't know how DD behaves when the sector size is different.

Let me specify, it's windows 7, I am upgrading the drive first, then I am upgrading to windows 10 on the ssd, then I am putting it into a modern computer, I don't want to buy a key

I could write down some of the errors

Should I just rewrite the drive? It takes an hour for the transfer

For Windows 7 recovery mode is F8 during boot. You could try that, not sure if that will really help though. Even if you can repair the Windows install, you don't know which other files might be damaged.

If it's about the activation, you could just fresh install Windows 10 onto the SSD using your Windows 7 key and see if that works. In a lot of cases Windows 10 still activates even though the free upgrade period is technically over.

And if that doesn't work you can still try another cloning.

I'm running repair, and I pressed f8

Could I use the other drive as an image, then plug in the drive, boot it on my computer, than treat it like the restore image?

Should theoretically be possible, but I don't know if Windows does any signing when it creates a "real" recovery image... and even then I don't know if it just repair Windows' files or all files...

Best bet would probably be clean install Windows 10 using the 7 key, if that doesn't work a proper clone via Clonezilla or any other utility.

I honestly never really trusted the "repair" stuff in Windows. Usually once it was broken it was broken and I just reinstalled, so I don't really have any experience with it.

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I'm recloning

Found the error, DD puts out
failed command: READ DMA

I can't really help you with DD unfortunately, sorry :confused:

READ DMA usually means dd has encountered a bad sector, and cant copy it. thus explaining your file corruption after cloning. you might try ddrescue as opposed to dd.

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It copied sucsessfully when I used sync, I will also try DD rescue, should I be worried about overwriting my ssd this much, I am pretty confident, but still a bit on edge

Just used the preivious modifications, good news, chrome launches, and when I run sfc /scannow the system doesn't crash! Now time to rebuild

No need to worry about the amount of writing. SSDs typically can handle well over 600TB of writes, most even soar past the PetaByte mark before dying. If you write 100GB/day on average, it's going to take you over 16 years to reach that 600TB mark.

As for upgrading and activating : Windows 10 sends the hardware ID (motherboard serial number for sure, possibly CPU details too) to the Microsoft servers upon activation. So if you activate Win10 now and then upgrade, your Win10 key will not be valid anymore because the key is already tied to the old hardware.
Your best option would be to stay clear of Win10 for now, re-install Win7 on the new machine with the old key, use the automated phone system to activate it and then do the upgrade to Win10.