Using 2 WD My Passport drives

[MFCMG51]

I have 2 identical WD My Passport 5 tb drives. Each one works fine individually on my Win11 pro Dell laptop but when I connect both drives to the USB bus the system becomes unstable…

to wit: Disk management and the USB bus recognize both drives. However only 1 gets assigned its drive letter and the disk management console locks up, forcing a reboot to get back into the system. Note that the WD drive utility I downloaded does the same thing.

The 2 drives were assigned different drive letters when I set each one up as individual drives.

I have other external hd’s on the USB bus and have no issues with using multiple external drives at the same time. The use of 2 WD drives is the only exception.

Please advise. I would like to use both WD drives to move files, utilities, etc. between the 2 drives.

Thanks in advance for your response.

[MFCMG51]

I want to add the when both drives are attached they both just click randomly - sounds like the old spin disk fatal clicking,

[MFCMG51]

correction - Disk mgt doesn’t see the second drive, but device mgr does

[Saudade]

Hmm.. That sounds like it may be a power issue. Are the other drives connected at the same time you connect the Passports? Are you connecting directly to the laptop or are you using a USB hub? If a hub, is it powered?

[MFCMG51]

It’s a powered USB hub. Something to add, is that if I plug the 2nd wd drive into the USB / charger port and leave the other on the main USB port it works. The challenge is that I need the power /USB port to keep the battery charging