SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD Suddenly Not Recognized

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1

Hi everyone,

I’m having a serious issue with my SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD and I’m really hoping someone here can help.

I’ve been using this drive for about 8 months without any issues. Yesterday, I plugged it into my computer like usual, but it didn’t show up in File Explorer. The drive itself lights up when connected, and I hear the Windows connection sound, but there’s no disk appearing anywhere.

What I’ve Tried:

  • Tested on multiple computers same issue on all

  • Tried different USB cables (including the original one)

  • Tried different USB ports

  • Checked Disk Management – the drive either doesn’t show up at all, or shows as “Unknown” and “Not Initialized”

  • Checked Device Manager – shows up under “Disk drives” but with a yellow warning icon sometimes

  • Tried updating drivers – no change

  • The drive light is solid on when connected

  • No unusual sounds coming from the drive

  • It was working perfectly the day before, no drops or physical damage

My Drive Info:

  • Model: SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD

  • Capacity: 1TB

I’ve been reading online and noticed many people reporting similar issues with this specific model. Some say it’s a hardware failure and the data might be recoverable only by professionals. Is that true?

Has anyone here successfully recovered data from this drive? Any DIY methods I can try before sending it to a data recovery service

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

2

Stop all write operations to the hard drive immediately, then use third-party data recovery software to scan the drive and attempt to recover the data.

3

You might want to take a look at this; it might be helpful.

4

Based on my assessment, it’s probably broken, so don’t use it anymore. If you want to recover your data, you’ll have to use third-party software.