Quote Originally Posted by jdc2000 View Post
If you have Acronis installed on your current boot drive, you should be able to use that to make an image of the USB attached drive without making a bootable CD. A bootable CD is a valuable tool to have however, so I do suggest you create one. When making the image from the drive with the problem, you may need to use the Acronis option to ignore bad sectors.

SSDs have no drive motor, and so they use less power. This is not really a big concern on desktop systems, but on laptops they can provide much better battery life. They are much faster than magnetic drives, and with no moving parts can be more reliable in laptops. However, when they go bad, which they eventually will (like any drive), you likely won't be recovering anything from them, so backups are essential.
jdc2000 - a very belated thank you for your tips about making a bootable CD (which I have now) and also about using the Arconis "ignore bad sectors" when taking a image from a problem drive. I have done this although I still find it necessary to do a repair install over it as sometimes it was running a bit unstable when using it. But it's not a big problem to do a repair install.

Thanks once again for the tips and again, sincerely apologies for the long delay in replying. There was the intention to reply sooner, but then, with work and...blah..blah..blah....well...I am sure you know what I mean. All the best