Sabrent USB3 enclosures making me sad

[Sxotty]

I have 2 sabrent USB3 enclosures. I have an SSD in one that I had loaded up a bunch of movies on to play in the car for my daughter. Anyway when I went to load them on in win8 it said the drive needed activated, then when I plugged into my PC in the car it said the drive was not formatted. When it works it was blazing fast, but it seems like it is failing and saying the SSD is unformated, missing the MBR, or has unactivated partitions about half the time. What the heck could cause this? I actually like the enclosure, but I contacted the company and they were totally useless. "You should right click on my computer, manage, storage, and format" Yeah no sh*t. So then I went back and forth until they said exchange it. I just wanted to know if this is typical behavior that is caused by not having enough power or something on the USB.

Alternatively any suggestions for USB3 enclosures? I used the cheapest USB2 ones before, but they were held together by plastic clips that often failed. Plus they are quite slow with the SSD.

 

[Npl]

How about either a big usb3 stick or a ready-to-use portable usb3 hdd?
Playing movies doesnt need much bandwidth, usb sticks should be quite enough (and I assume your ssd doesnt have much more capacity either). Sure transfering would rather suck unless you buy a more expensive and faster stick
And if you want the capacity, you could pick for example an "WD Elements SE Portable".

I dont thing enclosures are the way to go.

edit: There are fast usb sticks with 220MBs read / 130MBswrite speed - 128GB for 115€ - similar price as an ssd.

 

[Mize]

Any chance your SSD needs a firmware update? There were all kinds of problems with the Crucial M500 at release that were resolved by a firmware update...

 

[Sxotty]

It is a HDD from my old desktop from OCZ I think. I always was good in the PC. I think it might just be a power issue. I will try using it a bit only on my desktop and see if it keeps working well or has more problems.

I just had the enclosure b/c I had an extra hard drive. In any case I appreciate youguys input. I found a life hacker article about the "best enclosures" but it really seemed like they just picked random ones.

 

[Grall]

You had a 2.5" HDD in your desktop...? Or the enclosure has a wall-wart power supply...? (In which case power should not be an issue.) Cuz I don't think there's a USB port in existence that can reliably feed a 3.5" drive.

 

[Mize]

OCZ never made rotating drives, only SSDs.

 

[Sxotty]

I have 2 sabrent HDD enclosures.
2 2.5" hdd, 2 enclosures.
1 had a SSD from OCZ
1 had a HDD from fujitsu (I think an old latpop)

Both had issues, but I think it is somehow connected to the car fubaring the drives somehow due to low power. I am operating under that assumption. Maybe the power supply is having issues.

 

[Ryan Smith]

Both had issues, but I think it is somehow connected to the car fubaring the drives somehow due to low power. I am operating under that assumption. Maybe the power supply is having issues.

That would be my experience. If I plug my Sabrent into a USB 2.0 port that provides just a bit too little power, it acts exactly like yours does. The model I came from included a Y-cable, which rectified the problem, so that would certainly be my suggestion for a USB 2.0 port.

Though if you're having this much trouble on a USB 3.0 port, then that's quite a bit more concerning.

 

[Sxotty]

It is USB2 port, but I was using the Y cable. I think there just wasn't enough juice anyway.

I am glad to hear it seems to work well for you otherwise gives me hope to keep mine around.