So I bought the Western Digital 2T my passport with which to clone audiophile 18. Took about 13 hours and then said it was finished. Plugged the clone into my other two Microsoft win 10 machines and neither one of them can see the Clone it shows up in device manager but not in Windows Explorer and I can't open it to run the program. The cloning software I used is macrium. I also own acronis 2016 which apparently can see the drive. Still can't run it. Any computer Wizards smarter than me? (Yes I realize thats no great achievement!)

thank you all.

WSS

The first thing I would do is to go into Disk Management and make sure the drive has been assigned a drive letter. This happened to me a few months ago. My external HD did not have a drive letter assigned so Windows would not see it even though it shows up OK in Device Manager.

Keep in mind there are other situations that could cause this problem. This just happened to be mine at the time.

Info Links:

https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-doesnt-recognize-portable-hard-drive/ (Solution #2, just the drive letter portion!)

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-assign-a-drive-letter-in-windows-10/

https://www.howtogeek.com/96298/assign-a-static-drive-letter-to-a-usb-drive-in-windows-7/ (Also good for versions 8 & 10)

Before you do any of this, make sure you have no outstanding issues when you look at your Device Manager.

Good, that sounds reasonable
thank you!
WSS

Give it a ‘high’ alphabet letter so it can be the same on any PC. I use N for my BIAB drive.

Also, don’t plug the clone in on the same system with the cloned drive; the BIOS gets confused if two drives report the same info.

Thanks Matt!
WSS

Yes, you can format it and set a drive letter in Disk Manager.
You can just copy the files manually with Ctrl+A then drag, there's just one hidden file in the root datalist.asc it just points the shortcuts to the exe in the folder:

Most of the cases formatting is not necessary with a NEW drive IMO. USB, Western Digital and windows 10 sometimes are troublesome. With older WD USB stuff i needed WD's SES drivers BTW.

Also check for your latest Chipset drives for your mainboard. If you have a separate USB (3.0) controller card, check for it's latest drivers. I found especially that even USB-Audio can be influenced (dropouts) by the Graphics card drivers from AMD-RADEON. Furthermore for USB, check that the computer cannot switch off the connected USB, click right click on every HUB and check power management, and switch off selective suspend in power management. See pictures below.

BTW a higher drive letter defined is good advice, and you could use TeraCopy or FastCopy to copy faster, and i found the verify options there very useful. With both on my system with USB 3.0 copying can be up to 100 MB/s sometimes. F

Pipe, Fiddle, actually when I started up macrium it said it was going to erase everything on the new WD drive anyway.
I going to do the Disk Management today, that sounds like the ticket.
WSS

Keep us informed on your final fix as it could help others in your situation. Good luck.

Just to be sure I do not want to format the new Drive correct? It has been cloned and Disk Management sees it as audio file. I selected in as the new Dr but it doesn't seem to have changed anything. And the drivers are up-to-date.
WSS

Huh? Audio File?

If windows says your drivers are up to date, it usually means only that THEIR database is NOT up to date. Check the manufacturers web sites ....

PS you could have a viruskiller interfering with (USB) external drive access? F

Speech-to-text Fiddler I said audiophile
Also I opened the drive from Disk Management everything was there after I changed it to the letter n. Set up an installed properly. Now I will restart and see if it shows up in explorer.
WSS

Ah, solved thus. Higher drive letters is a must do; f.i. i always get my CD drives assigned to X and Y, and external backup drive to Z ...

Okay went through the driver's process but they were current. Went through the change letter process 3rd time was the charm. Asked me if I wanted to format and I said heck no. So there it is in Windows Explorer happy as a little red clam.
Thanks for the support everybody!
WSS

Well bad news. I had to drive up and running on the surface and the Dell even had the program going till it got hinky, closeout restart and the drive is gone again.
Set it as M drive on both machines. I think the actual program is G drive on my recording computer. That's the one I cloned it on. Tomorrow I'll try setting it as G drive and see if that makes a difference.
WSS

Weird. I begin to think that it's a hardware fault.

1) Check with an other USB cable first, even if it worked earlier.

2) If not, UNINSTALL all USB devices & USB hubs one by one by right clicking on them from Device Manager, see picture. Windows reinstalls them automatically, and it might be clever to do that in Safe Mode. There's also a tool for that, freeware, USBDeview. Recommendable and good for trouble shooting any USB stuff.

PS What type WD drive do you have, the small WD My Passport USB 3.0 as PGmusic stuff comes with? I have a few by now since they first came out; never had an issue with them. BUT they use 5V power from the USB bus on your computer to get them working, usually a weak point with laptops. In the BIOS of your computer there's occasionally a switched 'off' option to appoint a USB port to have extra power for (charging) external devices. Set that to on if you can. When you use a laptop and TWO USB external drives (??), it might be advisable to get a powered USB universal switchox in between. I have a cheap one, 15$ from china, came with a power supply, actually never needed it for these WD's though, but might with a laptop. WD sells them too: WD 3.1 hub

I have used it two different cables and the target Drive is a Western Digital My Passport Two T.

I ended up just formatting the Dr opening them both in separate windows and dragging the BB file over. when it's finished I'll drag the rest over and see if that works. I'm guessing it will.
WSS

as I said I formatted and copied the audiophile onto The Back-up USB drive. When into Disk Management set the drive as m. shows up in Windows Explorer I open the program and it works fine. Unfortunately when I restart the computer it is no longer in Windows Explorer. Back into Disk Management reset the letter of the drive again and now it works again. Until I reboot. There must be something I have to do to lock it into place?
WSS

Get USBdeview. Uninstall all USB stuff (you might not be able to use your mouse or keyboard all of a sudden at some point, if you uninstall them first when they're USB driven). However windows re installs all automatically when you reboot, and might clean up an eventuall USB mess up. If that's not helping, i still think your laptop doesn't have enough power to drive your WD hardisk; you'll need a powered USB harddisk hub with proper 5 volts supply on that bus.

PS It's still not clear to me what kind/brand of computer you have. Power problems are more likely with a laptop or tablet. My DELL precision laptop has only one USB port having extra power for such use. Did you try the drive on another computer yet? F

Sorry I should have been more clear about that! I do have a Microsoft Surface Pro but the one I'm trying to get to operate at this point is a Dell XPS desktop i7. Should have plenty of power to run USB drives. also it's plugged into the back not the top. I go into Disk Management reassign the letter and it works fine until I turn off the computer that I have to do that again.
WSS

This might help:

https://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/assign-permanent-drive-letters-to-a-removable-usb-drive-in-windows/

Weird. I guess the tips from Mario you already did ... My guess is update the mother board's BIOS; read on a forum that the Dell XPS USB stuff had some BIOS fixes: XPS BIOS - USB errors

PS Check the BIOS version you have using a tool like: BELARC ADVISOR (free download), or press F2 or DEL on bootup's first screen to find out your BIOS version. If it's older than the latest, download the the update BIOS bin, put it on an USB stick that works LoL. Usually there's an update routine from within the BIOS. If you're not sure, get some techie-help; you can freeze a mainboard by making mistakes.

Make sure this BIOS update .BIN file is meant EXACLTLY for your mainboard model (got a manual?). Also check for the latest chipset drivers; in Belarc Advisor you can see which one is mounted.

If you accidentally freeze the mainboards bios, there's usually a hard ware BIOS installer USB port and button to press on power up, marked on your basic connector print at the back of your PC. Do this with a BIOS bin file in the root of a connected USB stick. This happened to me once, a life saver, but i have an ASUS mainboard. F

You might find these articles helpful.

1. https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/drive-letter-is-missing-in-windows.html

Note that in the topic Drive Letter Disappears after Reboot, Western Digital HD's can be suspect on this problem.

2. https://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/223403-drive-letter-disappear-after-reboot.html

Note that the same problem is attributed to a Western Digital HD.