I finally gave up on the cloning, and did a fresh install of Win 10 on
a new SSD. The point of this was to see if I could rejuvenate a 7 or 8
year old laptop, and to see how much better LR would work with only
the change from HDD to an SSD. The laptop is maxed out at 8 GB memory,
and has a 2.2 Ghz Intel CPU.

The main test I used was the spot removal function, which was usable,
but terribly crippled before the changes. After choosing a large-ish
target area, I would move the source area around to see how easily it
would follow the mouse movement. Before the SSD, it would take
forever. So the verdict is that the SSD made a huge difference, and is
definitely worth a try if you have a PC that seems a bit sluggish
working with photo software. Spot removal now works nearly as well as
on my far better spec'd desktop. It's like having a new laptop.

But... Windows still sucks. I think. Repeated crashes and forced
restarts, especially when installing software, but at other random
times, also. At the same time, this laptop is not supported for
anything past Win 7 - no chipset updates at all. So if you do have
some interest in trying the same thing, check to see what OS your
laptop supports. I think you can force Win 10 onto just about anything
that's not an antique, but you should expect problems. Mine seem to
have diminished considerably. Maybe Windows fixes itself. And if
you're happy with an earlier version of Windows, an SSD will almost
certainly be a huge improvement.