SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 Flash Drive not working in Win7/x64

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1

I’m having problems with a USB 3.0 flash drive being recognized by my system.

I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. The drive is a SanDisk Extreme 64 GB stick. My m/b is XFX Nforce 780I SLI LGA775—an old one now, and it only has USB 2.0 ports. My understanding is that USB 3.0 devices should all be backwards compatible with USB 2.0, which makes sense. The only reason I got a USB 3.0 device is because I expect to be upgrading my computer (finally) within a few months.

When I plug the drive into my computer, Windows installs the drivers successfully. The blue LED flashes once when you plug it in, and again after the drivers are installed.  But the drive shows up with 0 capacity and 0 free space, and if you click on it in Explorer, it says “Please insert a disk into Removable Drive H:”. Very helpful.

Device Manager reports the device under Disk Drives as a SanDisk Extreme USB device.

If I take the same USB drive and put it in other systems, on either USB 2.0 or 3.0 ports, it works properly, leading me to conclude that it is my system and not the drive that is the problem.  The blue LED flashes the same as it does on my computer.

I went so far as to purchase a SilverStone USB 3.0 PCI-e adapter card to see if it would resolve the problem. Installed the drivers (Renesas Electronics 3.0.23, dated 8/21/2012). It did not fix the issue. Symptoms remain the same when plugged into the USB 3.0 ports.

After some hunting for XFX BIOS updates, I updated from P08 BIOS to P09, and then an unofficial P10 BIOS based off the EVGA P10 BIOS (XFX never published a P10 for this board). No change.

Really don’t know what else could be the problem here.  I’m hoping someone from SanDisk can offer ideas.

2

Wow, tough situation.  The only two things I can think of are the power supply on your machine is weak or the USB port’s contacts are dirty.

For the power supply option unplug as many things as you can from your machine.  If that helps you need a new power supply.

As for the USB port’s contacts, touching with emory paper may help.  I have a USB port that I have to do that to about once a year.  The others are fine, it’s jsut a problem with that one.

hth  

3

Well, it appears that after messing around with this for over a week, and finally giving up and seeking help, I was able to resolve it within hours after doing so. After a lot of Googling, one of the things I had seen repeatedly was that changing drive letters may resolve the issue. When I first had the problem, I had done this, and it did not fix the issue. However, somewhere between doing this originally, and after implementing the fixes in my original post, plus several other items not listed, it looks like my original problem was fixed, and that the change of drive letters was actually causing the residual issue with the same symptoms. The USB drive now works in either my original USB 2.0 ports or the USB 3.0 adapter card TL;DR: changing drive letters for the USB drive fixed the issue, but only after a myriad of other changes. Thanks for the input.

4

Wow!!  Happy to hear you got the problem resolved.

Thanks for the update. :smiley: