OCZ Vector not recognised by laptops

[Ankylosaurus]

Hi all, My desktop is OOU at the moment because of a faulty PSU and as a temporary replacement I have bought a Dell Inspiron 17R SE 7720. I had 2 SSD's in my desktop, an OCZ Vector 512GB and an OCZ Vertex 3 240GB, but when I connect these to the 17R via a USB 2 adapter the Vertex is recognised but the Vector is not, including in Disk Management. I also have an HP 6510b laptop and the same thing happens there. Is there any reason I a missing?

[DaveLembke]

It could be the external enclosure. Have you swapped the drives between the known good enclosure and the drive that wont work? I have also heard about some cheap external enclosures having issues with drives larger than 500GB. What is the make/model of the external enclosure being used to look up specs?

[Ankylosaurus]

Thanks for your reply. The adapter is actually from a Seagate Goflex 250GB external drive where the USB end can be detached and used to plug other drives in. The "activity" lights on it do not illuminate when the Vector is plugged into it.

[DaveLembke]

The firmware in that external adapter SATA to USB board I believe can not address the larger SSD. I ran into a similar issue with an old Maxtor 80GB external that I placed a 320GB IDE HDD into it and it wouldnt work. Come to find out I had a 137GB hard drive limit on the external drive so I ended up upgrading it to 120GB instead.

*If you have another drive 500GB or larger to try on this you can confirm that it is in fact the capacity limitation which I believe that controller /adapter has.

You can buy pretty cheap empty external sata hdd cases and pop this drive inside. This one linked supports up to 1TB capacity for $7  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2C50SK1082

If it doesnt work in this $7 case, then the SSD may have been damaged when the PSU died. Although rare, it could happen if the PSU caused an over voltage output.

[Ankylosaurus]

Ok it sounds as though that is the reason, as the OCZ Vector is relatively new and was working fine till the PSU problem. Since the laptop has caddies for 2 drives I will just put it in the unused one temporarily.
Thanks again!