External ssd file recovery

Hi there, hoping you can help.

I have a laptop with an M2 sata ssd. A recent windows update caused certain programs to cease working. I attempted to fix the issue, but somehow managed to lock my user account out of the drive. I bought a replacement ssd and installed windows to get the laptop up and running again, so far so good.

I also bought a usb adaptor to plug the old m2 sata ssd into in order to recover files from the original drive. I plug this into the laptop, the device lights up and the connected drive gets warm (which to me indicates it is correctly connected and operational), however I dont get the usual notification about a connected usb device, and nothing shows up for it in explorer, device manager or disk management. I have plugged the device into a different pc, with identical (lack of) result.

I dont believe the adaptor needs any other drivers. I have contacted the seller (a Chinese company on ebay) but am not expecting to get much joy there. I only have a couple of ideas that I can think of:

• is it possible that the adaptor and the ssd have different regions? Like dvd's and consoles and stuff used to have? Or should they all be universal now?
• is there something else I can try to locate the drive and its contents on the laptop or another pc? I had a quick look in the laptop bios but couldnt see anything obvious.

Its obviously possible I have either a faulty adaptor, or the drive itself has now broken. I could test that by pulling the new drive back out of the laptop and testing the device on another pc, but I'd rather other solutions first if possible.

Fingers crossed, many thanks for any suggestions,

Joe