Transferring data from one external hard drive to another ex

[Keith]

I thought this would be easy but for some reason I am having problems. I just want to transfer all the data from one WD external hard drive to another WD external hard drive.

I connected both of them to my laptop and I thought it would be a simple matter of opening both drives up and copy and pasting. But when I open up MY Computer, it only sees the hard drive I plugged in first? I don't know how to find the second one?

What am I doing wrong? Or is there a better way to transfer data from one hard drive to another?

I am running windows 8 if it makes any difference?

Thanks for any help!

[DJ Tucker]

what motherboard do you have. that way I can help you find the reason for this using your bios. however if you know how to get into your bios and find your sata hdd then you should be abl to enable ide primary and secondary to then find both drives upon next reboot

[KnightRid]

I ran into this when the laptop did not have enough power coming through the usb ports to handle two drives at once. Do you have a powered usb hub you could try or do either of the drives have a power cable with them?

[Siver]

You could just open up the cases holding the HDD and hook them up internally into your computer, SATA cable + power cable from PSU and they'll run just fine.

Externals are pretty easy to open up, pretty much just a plastic shell with a few clips on each side and on the inside is an adapter