Format replaced system drive - Acer Aspire 3

[intersync]

I got an Acer Aspire 3 laptop for my parents for $300 and decided to replace the 1tb drive in it with an SSD. That was a task on its own--I used a USB-to-SATA adapter and EaseUS to clone the system drive to the SSD. The new drive wouldn't be recognized as a bootable device until I cloned all partitions to the SSD and booted into Windows via USB. But when I swapped it with the 1tb SATA it wouldn't boot into Windows until I did a fresh install of Windows onto the SSD via a bootable USB.

But now I can't get the old 1tb system drive to initialize on any other computer. Not via USB or SATA. It worked as the system drive when I plugged it back in to the SATA port on the original computer. But now I've run Erase Disk via bootable USB on it. That was a 3 hour process that says it was successful, but it still won't initialize! It is recognized by all computers I plug it into but gives an I/O error when I try to initialize. Diskpart couldn't do it either! Any ideas?

 

[intersync]

I finally got it. I re-installed Windows onto the drive on its original computer via bootable Windows USB. Then plugged that drive into the open SATA port on my Acer Nitro 5. It actually booted into windows on that drive, which I wasn't expecting. Once I switched boot order and booted from the system drive I am able to format the 1tb drive via disk management. Sheesh. I had also set a HDD password on the drive on the original laptop when I was still struggling to boot the clone, and cleared that as well. It was prompting me for the PW on my Nitro 5 but not taking the correct one. Not sure if that had anything to do with the I/O error. If so, I shall live and learn and hope this post helps someone else.