I have an Alienware M14x laptop and a few Corsair USB 3.0 thumb drives. The thumb drives most of the time would not get recognized by Windows. They throw an “unrecognized device” error when they are plugged in. I can plug the same thumb drives into a USB 2.0 port on the same laptop and they work fine just not at USB 3.0 speeds which is not cool. I can plug other USB 3.0 devices, like a Western Digital external hard drive, and they work just fine at USB 3.0 speeds.
After some searching I found some rather lengthy instructions here that fixed the problem perfectly for me and a co-worker with the same laptop. Essentially the instructions walk you through getting Windows 7 drivers installed for the USB 3.0 hub and ports.
I imagine this applies to more than just the Alienware M14x and would work for other laptops as well.