Trying to clone Seagate 2.5 HDD Using USB3 Cable.

No. you need to plug in the Hard drive to the USB Cable first, make sure if it powered of (If not powered though the USB Cable already) and THEN plug it in.

You will know if you need power. if the USB adapter you are using ONLY connect to SATA then YES you need power. if it covers both power and sata then you are good.

Also how are you cloning, what software are you using, and are you in windows or off a bootable CD? If you are running off a bootable CD/Thumb drive and if it doesn't have USB 3.0 support then it WILL not see the drive when plugged into a USB 3.0 slot. i would try a 2.0 slot, if any, if that is the case.

I'm pretty sure your problem is power. Your laptop has USB2 ports on it, and using a USB3 cable does not change that. The backwards compatibility design of USB systems just means that, when you plug a USB3 device using a USB3 cable into a USB2 port, the entire system behaves exactly like a USB2 system. One aspect of this is power supplied to the USB device you connect.

The laptop's USB2 port has a limit of 0.5 amps it can provide to any USB device."Laptop hard drives" for use with USB2 ports came is two designs. One had a special cable with TWO connectors on one end to plug into TWO USB2 ports on the computer in order to get enough power to run the drive. The other design used smaller slower HDD units inside to limit the power it required. In your case, OP, you are using a SATA HDD unit that uses MUCH more power than those smaller "Laptop Drives", with an adapted cable that allows you to plug into a USB port. But the port simply cannot provide the power it needs.

Now, you say that same cable worked fine with a SSD. I bet its power needs were MUCH less than what this HDD needs, and that's why that could work.

Reading the specs for that HDD, I see it needs at max. 1.0 amps to start it up. Now, even the new USB3 port design can supply only 0.9 amps - more than a USB2 port, but maybe not enough for your HDD. The best solution for you would be to see it there is a way to provide the power that HDD needs directly to the adapter system you are using and NOT depend on the USB port for any power. The adapter cable system you have may also have such a feature in the form of an additional "power brick". OR, you may have to get a different device (like an external drive enclosure with its own power supply module) to mount that HDD in.

There is another POSSIBLE solution. If you buy a USB3 Hub with its own power supply module, so that no device connected to it actually draws power from the computer's USB port, it might work. I have used such a hub unit that claims to provide up to 1 amp per port for devices plugged into it, and it DOES provide enough power for a new USB3-spec "Laptop Hard Drive" external unit. So MAYBE this can give your HDD on an adapter cable enough power to run. The hub, in turn plugs into any USB2 or USB3 port on a computer for data transfer. But even though this setup may get you enough power to run, the data transfer speed will still be the older slow USB2 speed, because that's all the laptop's ports can do.

So, if the adapter cable you have does not already include its own power supply module, you're looking at buying something additional. It could be:

(a) a power module for your existing adapter cable system;
(b) a new external HDD enclosure that fits the HDD you have, comes with its own power supply module, and connects to any computer with either a USB2 or a USB3 port; or,
(C) a USB3 Powered Hub (that is, one with its own power supply module) that can provide slightly more than "standard" power to a connected device.