My ipad dosen't recognice my ixpand drive.

I have the exact same problem. This started happening after I formatted my iXpand drive using windows explorer (used the default exFAT format and default allocation unit size). The same drive used to work perfectly well on both my iPad Pro 10.5 and iPhone 6s. I have tried repuggling the usb, force closing the app, rebooting the phone, reinstalling the sandisk app, and updating the firmware using the tool listed here (it says it already has the latest firmware installed). I am on IOS 12 and I have another ixpand drive of the same size which works perfectly well on both my iPad Pro 10.5 and iPhone 6s. I have a suspicion that the firmware update tool is not working properly but I can’t be sure since I do not have any device that’s on IOS 8. Is there a way to manually install the firmware on my iXpand not using that tool listed on site?