[SOLVED] Can I use two of the same external hard drives (Seagate STGY8000400)?

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Jun 28, 2020
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I purchased one Seagate STGY8000400 for mass storage of movies, music, etc., and I bought a second one for the purpose of backing everything up. When I have them both hooked up to a desktop, it only reads one of them at a time. I had a WD Elements before the first Seagate and it tipped over and I believe ruined it but I was able to salvage the files from the WD to the Seagate and it read both of them no problem but with two of the same Seagate it won't read them both. Is there some way to get them to read or is there some kind of problem with having two of the same hooked up to the same machine?
 
Jun 28, 2020
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What is the make/model of your motherboard? Also, are both external HDDs connected to their own power supply?

Asus Z97-A. Yes, they are both desktop external HDDs with an individual power supply per HDD.

When I go to my devices, I can see both of them are showing up but and it will let me open only one to access it's files but the other one just shows that another "desktop" is connected. Also when I click on the "This PC" tab when I have a document folder open it only shows whichever one that allows me to access the files.
 
Jun 28, 2020
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Did you clone these drives? Is it possible that you have a disk signature collision?

I literally just bought the second one, opened it and plugged it in so no.
Honestly I was unfamiliar with what disk cloning was until you mentioned it but from what I see you need to actively do something with a program to clone and I didn't do anything like that. Just plugged it in and tried to access it.
If I have only one or the other plugged in, they both seem to work as intended, but if both are plugged in, I can only access the files on one of them.
 
Jun 28, 2020
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Did you personally format each HDD before using them? Or, did you use right out of the box and use the factory partitions?

I just used it right out of the box, probably amateur hour stuff I suppose. I am going to do some reading up on quick format vs full format now for sure.

I checked out the link that gardenman posted. Went into disk management and changed the drive letters on both of them and I am test running copying files right now and it's working as should it seems. I imagine that will do the trick but I'll update if not.

Thank you all so much for the input and quick response to my situation, you are all awesome.
 
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