Cloning Failing

I once cloned a desktop HDD to SSD and thought it might be the solution to my slowing laptop but I have run into trouble.

 

Laptop HDD is Hitachi 250GB with 3 partitions namely 13GB Healthy(Recovery), 100MB Healthy(System, Active, Primary Partition) and 154.74GB Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition). The 154GB was larger but I have shrunk it so that the total is just smaller than the SSD. Corsair SSD is Force GS 180GB - brand new and received earlier today.

 

I connected the SDD to an external USB to SATA adaptor and made the mistake of creating a partition. I then downloaded and ran Corsair's SSD Toolbox and when it didn't do anything discovered that I shouldn't have created the partition so I removed it.

 

Having removed the partition I attempted to clone the HDD to the SSD but, although it created 3 partitions it finished with an error message (Cloning Failed) and the big (Boot) partition files looked roughly OK but "properties" suggested that the total file size was approx 10GB when it should have been roughly 100GB. It wouldn't boot when fitted in place of the HDD.

 

2nd attempt (having removed the partitions) failed in much the same way (Cloning Failed. Invalid Request Type) but this time each of the 3 partitions has $RECYCLE.BIN dated June 2013 and System Volume Information dated today.

 

OS is W7 (64 bit) Home Premium Service Pack 1.

 

Please can somebody advise me about what I might be doing wrong.

best to just do a clean install at this point. My feelings are you slowing laptop is from Wimrot and more than likely why the clone is failing.