Crucial M500 480gb SSD Replacement for stock HDD on Late 2011 MacBook Pro keeps freezing

First, I apologize for the length of this. I want to make sure I get all the facts out so that hopefully I can get some help. There is s TL;DR version below if you don't want the blow-by-blow edition.

My wife has been complaining about the speed of her Late 2011 MacBook Pro for the last year. I finally broke down and decided to give it a boost by upping the memory to 16gb (from the stock 4gb) and replacing the 500gb HDD with a 480gb Crucial M500 SSD.

My plan was to simply swap the drives, replace the memory, then boot to System Recovery Mode (Cmd - R at boot) and do a fresh install. I started the Disk Utility and created a new partition on the SSD no problems. I think picked the option for "Fresh Install". The first thing I noted was that it wanted to install Lion instead of Mavericks, which was on it, but figured whatever...it would update as soon as I get things rebuilt. I would then use a Roswell SATA-to-USB cable to mount the old drive and do a "recovery" of all her old date. The system did the initial download as part of the System Recovery Mode, then said it was rebooting to complete the install. At this point, I got the white Apple screen with the spinner...but it kept spinning, and spinning, and spinning. No indication it was actually doing anything, just spinning.

I let it run for another hour or so, then finally killed it by holding the power for 10sec. I tried the install again, but again I get the white screen with the spinner. This happens at least one more time.

Finally I try a different approach. Once again, I boot to System Recovery Mode. I again erase the drive, but this time in Disk Utility I try to do a "Recovery" from the old drive to the new drive. I hit the 'Go' button, it says "Setting up..." for about 10min (I believe it was trying to calculate the time), then pops up with an estimated time to restore the new SSD from the old as 7hrs. I checked it a few times before bed to make sure the progress was moving, then went to bed at about 10% or so.

This morning, however, when I checked the status I find that it's still stuck at like 15%. The system is not locked up: I can move the mouse, drag the window, etc. I hit Cancel on the restoration, and it says it's cancelling, but nothing.

Another 20-30min later it still says "Cancelling...". So, once again I force-cycle the power, and once again I hit Disk Utility. This time, however, when I try to erase the disk, it gets to EXACTLY the same spot the restoration got stuck at, then pauses. I left it there when I left for work, but I have a feeling something is fishy that is causing it to do this.

TD;DR

I am trying to replace my wife's HDD with an SSD. I performed the following attempts using System Recovery to no avail:

1. Fresh install of Lion...seemed to get stuck after reboot


2. Restore using Disk Utility from the old HDD to the new SSD...stuck at 15%-ish, and now the drive will not erase (gets stuck at 15%-ish)

Question

Is the drive just bad or is there some other technique/process I need to use in order to change the drive out other than what I have tried?