SANDISK EXTREME PRO USB 3.1 Simply doesn't get recognised as storage on MacOS / Linux

[gubbeniladan]

Bought a SANDISK EXTREME PRO USB 3.1 SOLID STATE FLASH DRIVE to use as a portable sys drive running linux in order to not have to deal with dualbooting separate Linux Distros both on my MacBook Pro8.2 and HackPro-Workstation and since USB3.1 is backwards compatible with both 3.0 and 2.0 in general and SanDisk clearly states that this specific drive is as well, I thought I’d just go plug it in, reformat and then make sure to install Linux in a fashion that would be bootable on both systems.

well, that didn’t happen…

* Booth my systems recognised the device with the right device name, vendor ID etc but apparently not as a storage device since id doesn’t show up in either Disk Utility running booth MacOS 10.12.3 and Debian Linux with kernel version 4.8.15. (Now I’m not an expert but to me this seems like the type of behaviour you’d expect when the appropriate drivers aren’t installed, which in this situation makes no sense to me…)
* plugged it into booth USB ports on my macbook, thru both USB controllers on my workstation (booth as USB3.0 and USB2.0) and passed it thru to my Linux VM both as USB3.0 and USB2.0

So i guess I either got a device with a faulty memory controller, SanDisk messed something up in their firmware so that the device in fact isn’t backwards compatible as they claim it is or the device need drivers that SanDisk doesn’t supply (I know that makes zero sense but so doesn’t getting a not backwards compatible drive that was clearly stated as backwards compatible). Either way, it ■■■■■ and i’m pretty disapointed…

[thatcomicsguy]

Well…, it’s a few years since this question was asked, and I’m not working on the same OS.

However…, since I ran into the same problem (on Windows 10) and solved it, I thought I’d stick my hand up in class and offer the following:

The Problem (re-capped): I stick my fresh new thumb drive into my computer and…, nothing. The device was recognized, (you could see it in under Device Manager), but refused to be listed as an available drive on my desktop. I tested it on a different machine with no issue, and performed a giant file transfer from my beat up old thumb drive. (I like to get a fresh one each year). So it was obviously the computer that was causing the problem.

I solved the problem by using some of the Microsoft admin tools baked into the OS. (tools which have been around for several generations of the OS.)

In particular…

Windows Administrative Tools ==> Computer Management

Once in that window, click “Disk Management”

In my case, the SSD thumb drive was listed along with all the other drives on my system.

Right click on the drive and select, “Change Drive Letter and Paths”

I let the system automatically assign a letter.

Suddenly, it was visible to the desktop GUI. Hooray! Problem solved! Another annoying speed bump in the world of hyper-complex micro computing navigated, and the world moves on after wasting an hour and a half of my life.

If you’re on a Mac or Linux and running into a similar issue, there is probably a way of assigning a drive letter. Try that, and maybe it’ll work.

I hope this helps somebody.

Cheers!