BIOS Doesn't detect HDD after clone

[Benevolent Deity]

My OS is Win10. I've been using the "Ease US Todo Backup Free 6.0" application to clone disks for years with great success, but I've now encountered a problem I don't understand. I've been trying to clone a system HDD from an Acer Aspire PC to another HDD and I am using a SATA to USB external adapter for the target disk, a technique that has never failed me in the past. The cloning operation seems to proceed and complete normally and when I look at the resulting target disk when still plugged into the SATA to USB adapter it seems to contain all the same partitions and data as the source disk. However, when I connect the target disk directly to the computer's SATA port the BIOS doesn't detect any disk at all. I've tried this with three separate target disks and different SATA to USB adapters and the results are the same. It seems that the cloning operation is messing up whatever the BIOS is looking for when it is detects disks that are connected to the SATA ports. I now have three practically new 1TB disks that were perfectly good before the clone and now are usable only when connected via a SATA to USB adapter. I've tried deleting the partitions on these disks, reformatting, and cloning from a different source disk but nothing helps.

What could possibly be causing this issue and is there any way to make these disks recognizable by the BIOS again? They were all recognized correctly before the clone.

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi


are you sure this sata port & sata data cable can detect a hard drive before it is cloned?

can these sata hard drives be detected on other PC's?

regards
Mike Barnes

 

[Benevolent Deity]

I resolved this issue, but I have no idea why it worked. I put one of the post-clone disks that the BIOS would no longer recognize on a different machine, and its BIOS did recognize it. However, even though I tried cloning my OS to that disk I got an error message about it being non-bootable when I tried to boot from it. I then tried deleting the partitions, and cloning from a different disk but that didn't work either, even though the clone appeared to succeed. Finally, I put the disk back on the machine whose BIOS still wouldn't recognize it and I initiated a complete Windows reinstall from a USB installation stick. Amazingly, the Windows installer did recognize the drive, so I deleted the 4 partitions the installer found and completed the install successfully. Now the BIOS recognizes the disk again. I don't understand what is going on but I'm just glad the disk works again. How can bad partitioning cause the BIOS not to recognize a disk?