Alright, this is a long ass story so sit down and I'll try to condense it
I own pic related, an x51 that's about 6 years old. What happens around a computer's 6th birthday? HDD issues! My HDD started failing. I wasn't worried, a buddy of mine is good with hardware and I have basic knowledge. So I bought a new HDD and a SATA->USB cable to clone the data.
Once they arrive, I go to hook up the new drive with the cable and it's not showing up in file explorer, which is a common problem. Just go to disk management and format it right? That's where things get complicated. I go to disk management and it shows the primary HDD as Disk 0, and the new HDD as Disk 1. However, the new HDD is showing as "No Media" as opposed to it's size and state.
Buddy and I are both confused, we check the box for the cable and see that it's not Windows 10 compatible. Not that it should matter, but we get a new one.
New one arrives, same issue. No media. So now we come to the conclusion that it's the new HDD that's out of whack, they probably sent me a dud. File for a return, get a new one. Same issue. No media.
At this point I start scouring the internet for answers, updating every firmware, doing every trick I can possibly do to make it read the new HDD, and then I saw a post from a guy on reddit a couple years ago who had an issue with his SATA dock, he was getting the No Media error, but when he plugged the HDD into his computer's internal bay it worked just fine. So I thought of what I could do with this info. The new drive I have doesn't have Windows on it so the computer wouldn't be able to boot, then I remembered that I made a boot/installation drive about a year ago.
I popped out the old drive and inputted the new one, plugged in the boot/installation drive and fired her up. Everything went smoothly, installed Windows 10, the drive is a self sufficient drive now.
But now when I go to plug in the old HDD, the failing one, I still get the No Media error. And vice versa