Here is a follow up to my previous questions on cloning hard drives.

My initial attempt to clone a new Dell drive was unsuccessful and we figured it was due to the Dell partition and recovery sectors.

Installed a new 2nd blank drive and did a clean install of Windows 7, Office, all drivers and updates. Re-installed the Acronis cloning software downloaded the latest new version of it and installed it and attempted to clone to a new 3rd hard drive. ( All drives are same brand Seagates and same 2TB size.)

Same results Acronis shows greyed out options for the destination drive that are non click able which will not allow the cloning process to begin.

Sent another email to Acronis support about this (actually it's been an ongoing discussion about the shortcomings of their program.) They seem to be stumped as well.

The latest suggestion is there may be an issue with Acronis recognizing the drive through my USB adapter that has power and SATA connections. It recognizes it's attached and is click able when selecting source drive but nothing is click able when choosing the destination drive.

They suggested I hook it up to another SATA port and power supply plug in the tower.

That requires 2 connectors.

I have  another connector coming from the power supply like currently plugs into and powers the drive in the computer.

HOWEVER I only have 2 SATA plugs on the main board. There are connection openings for more but only 2 are installed and useable. 

My question can I use this orange SATA cable that is currently running up to the combo read write blue ray DVD drive to connect to a second hard drive and use the second power connector coming out of the power supply.  Do I risk computer in any way by powering a second drive this way. Are different colored SATA cables for ID only or are there physical differences ?

See picture below for reference.

Orange and blue SATA cables come off main board at red arrow.

Blue SATA wire goes to computer hard drive at blue arrow.

Orange SATA wire goes to combo Blu ray DVD drive at orange arrow

Second power feed off power supply is at yellow arrow. 

So can I use the power supply connection at the yellow arrow and the SATA connection at the orange arrow to connect to second hard drive, restart computer  (what error messages or problems will I encounter there) and then attempt to clone the 3rd drive from this second clean install one I made ?

This will allow me to isolate the Acronis as either not recognizing the USB connection or whether they have a more serious software issue. 

What other option do I have without any other SATA connections.

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