Everything was going great until the cloning on the 8500,
It started OK and finished successfully but when I put the
clone in to make sure it booted and showed the desktop it
did so and restarted but then the screen went black and gave
me a strange message that this OS isn't valid (I bought the
8500 new) I pressed the power button until it restarted and
it came back normally to the desktop and I shut it down
normally but that was strange.

I've been trying to connect the external HD to do the 4th clone
but it will not recognize it.

It does and it doesn't I hear the noise when it connects to the
computer but there are no pop-ups or icon to remove the
connection safely and I've tried 3-4 times with the same result.
I checked to make sure the HD was seated properly and still no
connection. All I get is this.

Even the Sandisk card from my camera won't connect.

https://postimg.cc/nXcjg66h

I've been working on this all night,.. hopefully you'll have some ideas
when I next check in. It's so weird to complete 3 clones and then this,...

Thoughts/Suggestions

Robert