You MIGHT be having a power issue, but it depends on the details.
There are a lot of "Portable Hard Drives" sold today for use with laptops that are specifically sold as USB3 devices, and MANY Transcend units are like that. What almost all of them SAY is that they are "compatible with USB2". What they do NOT tell you clearly is that they CAN work with a USB2 system as far a data transfers are concerned, but ONLY if you can arrange for them to have enough electrical power to run!
The USB3 new system provides to an attached device 5VDC power at up to 0.9 amps, and most "USB3 Portable Drives" are designed specifically to work properly with that power supply. BUT the older USB2 system supplied only up to 0.5 amps, and there were almost NO portable drive units that could operate with that limit on power. It is certain the current Portable Drive units sold as USB3 devices can NOT operate properly if you connect them only to a USB2 port. If you try that, you typically get the symptoms you have described: the unit sort of looks like it is working, but in fact it fails all the time.
If that is your situation, you have about four options.
1. Connect the drive to a genuine USB3 port, and be sure to use a USB3 cable for that.
2. TRY to find a special connection cable. The older USB2 Portable Drives often came with a special cable to connect that had TWO USB2 connectors on one end, and you have to connect BOTH of them to separate USB2 ports on the host computer. That could provide the unit with sufficient power to operate. If you can find one of those cables in a computer parts place, you may be able to use it with your USB3 newer Portable Drive and get it working.
3. CHECK the Transcend unit. SOME have a jack on them where you can connect a separate power supply module (a "wall wart", maybe) to provide the required power to the drive directly, so it does not rely on power from the host USB2 port. If your drive does have that, then you need to find a power supply module (maybe buy from Transcend?) and use it. If you don't have such a jack, you can't use this option.
4. I dealt with this a different way. I bought a separate USB3 HUB that comes with its own power supply module. That system provides to the Hub all the power needed for all of the USB3 devices plugged into it. The Hub (and its devices) does not use any power from the host computer's port, so there is no limit that way. Then you MUST use proper USB3 cables between the Hub and any USB3 device (like your drive). You can use this with a proper USB3 port on a host computer AND a USB3 cable from computer to Hub, and that will get you full performance at fast USB3 data transfer speeds. But you also can use it with a USB2 port on a host computer and any cable (USB2 of USB3) from Hub to computer port, but this will get you slower older USB2 data transfer rates; however, it WORKS because you have solved the power limit problem by using the powered USB3 Hub to provide proper power to the USB3 drive unit.
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