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windows cant dectect my portable usb hard disk after i have use this portable hardisk to clone my ssd.

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I have use True imaging 2018 to clone my ssd to my portable usb drive. A Western Digital 2.5 inch portable hard drive. After clone was successful, i plug in the drive to see whats inside. However now window cant detect my drive.

Is funny, windows seems to be able to detect it as on the window tray, the safely remove hardware icon is there to eject to my USB Drive. However under my PC, they only detect my ssd drive and nothing appear for my usb drive.

Is this normal.

Is my first time cloning

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Bernie, welcome to these User Forums.

Is there a specific reason why you are doing a clone of your internal SSD drive to a portable USB drive?  Cloning should normally be used when you are wanting to remove the source drive and intend replacing it with the cloned target drive.

If you are using cloning to just make a backup of your internal SSD drive, then I would recommend using the normal Acronis backup feature to do this, which will allow you to use your portable drive for further backups too.

One of the reasons why your portable drive may not be visible is because you have performed the cloning from within Windows using ATI and have not since restarted your computer.  When you create a cloned drive, this is a duplicate of the source, including having the same disk signature as the source.  You should not boot into Windows with the two cloned drives both connected as this can lead to a disk signature clash and can corrupt the Windows boot configuration data.

I would recommend disconnecting the USB portable drive, then restart Windows and then reconnect the portable drive after the Windows Desktop is shown.  If the portable drive is still not shown, then you may need to go into Windows Disk Management and allocate a drive letter to the portable drive.

Does your USB drive report itself as a Removable drive?  You can check this in Disk Management.  If your disk reports as a removable drive then Windows itself can block the drive being usable as installing Windows to a removable or portable drive is prohibited by the EULA.

"I have use True imaging 2018 to clone my ssd to my portable usb drive. A Western Digital 2.5 inch portable hard drive." I have noticed with WD Elements USB drives they are not recognised as removable under Windows 10. This may be playing a role in the problems you are experiencing. 

Ian

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Hi,

I'm trying to make a duplicate clone for my existing windows system so that if anything happen to my existing SSD, i can just remove my existing SSD and then boot from my portable USB HDD. I thought that cloning is like a mirror image of my SSD. Am i wrong? My idea is to have a ready back up of my existing Window system and just boot from my back up if anything happen.

I assume the back up is only back up of files and data, not an image of my System drive. 

Anyway Windows detect the Portable HDD as a removable drive but not on the File explorer.

However i plug the Portable HDD into my another computer, and it does appear on the File Explorer. It shows empty data inside but the drive space become 500GB instead of its original 1TB.

 

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Hi,

I'm trying to make a duplicate clone for my existing windows system so that if anything happen to my existing SSD, i can just remove my existing SSD and then boot from my portable USB HDD. I thought that cloning is like a mirror image of my SSD. Am i wrong? My idea is to have a ready back up of my existing Window system and just boot from my back up if anything happen.

I assume the Acronis back up is only back up of files and data, not an image of my System drive. Therefore i prefer to use the ATI instead. 

Anyway Windows detect the Portable HDD as a removable drive but not on the File explorer.

However i plug the Portable HDD into my another computer, and it does appear on the File Explorer. It shows empty data inside but the drive space become 500GB instead of its original 1TB.

Bernie wrote: "if anything happen to my existing SSD, i can just remove my existing SSD and then boot from my portable USB HDD"

Sorry, but Microsoft will not allow you to boot into Windows from a removable USB drive unless you have purchased one of their premium versions of Windows and used their Windows To Go application.

I would recommend using your portable 1TB drive to store backups of your main SSD drive but you will probably need to wipe the portable drive first to get back the whole space for use.

You can wipe the portable drive using the following commands from an Administrator level command prompt window.

diskpart
list disk   (to identify USB drive, i.e. 1)
select disk 1  (ensure you have selected the external portable drive!)
clean
create partition primary
active
format fs=ntfs quick
assign
exit

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Hi,

So to clone a mirror image of my Windows System which is on a SSD M.2, how should i go about it? I have a spare 3.5' 1TB HDD. Can i clone a image of my SSD to this 1TB HDD?

If anything happened, my system crash, Can i just go to bios and choose to boot up from this cloned HDD?

Thanks for yr help!:) 

Bernie, if you install your spare 1TB HDD in your computer alongside the M.2 SSD, then you should be able to clone from the SSD to the HDD but there are some risks involved in having the 2 drives installed and then booting into Windows.  When you do the clone, you also duplicate the disk signature and this can lead to a disk signature clash and cause problems with Windows.

What you could try doing would be as follows:

Connect the HDD and perform the clone from the SSD.

Shutdown the system, remove the SSD (temporarily) then boot into your BIOS and select the HDD as the Boot device and check that the cloned drive will boot correctly.

If all looks OK, then shutdown, replace the SSD, disconnect the HDD cables, then change the BIOS Boot device back to the SSD again and check again that all is still OK with Windows.

Note: If you have a UEFI BIOS system, then the Boot device should be the Windows Boot Manager not the actual physical drive.

Please understand that the only way to update a cloned drive would be to repeat the clone procedure, there are no options to schedule such updates, as can be done when using Backups.