iXpand 3.0 not working

I purchased my iXpand 3.0 Nov 2017 and only used it twice to transfer from my iPhone 6 to the iXpand. One day it was fine and the next time I plugged it in I could not see my photos/videos. When I plugged it in the 3rd time to move my photos/videos to a 2nd drive for a backup it wasn’t detected, no error messages, I just couldn’t see the drive to find my data. Not on my iPhone, not on my Mac, no on a PC.  I read where it says to use the firmware update tool but it asks you to plug in your iXpand but then it doesn’t recognize that I’ve plugged it in.  Anyone have any ideas on what’s going on? Please don’t tell me i’ve lost all my precious photos and videos!   Thought I’d reach out here before I inquire with SanDisk about how we go about retrieving my data through a service. 

Thanks,

Lorrie   

if it is not detected by your phone, Mac, or PC it is likely bad and would need to be replaced. the sandisk warranty does not cover data recovery so if you do not have a backup of the data on the drive you would have to send it to a company that provides data recovery services. 

Wow.  They really don’t support their product by paying to have priceless pictures given back to the customer that purchased their product? That floors me. Best Buy quoted over $500. They even said no guarantee on getting anything back but you still have to pay!!  I don’t have that kind of money but really want my photos back. I have no idea where else to go to get the data at a reasonable price. I just assumed SanDisk would take care of it since the disk was defective. :-(   Thanks for your response. 

no storage company warrants the data. same thing for the hard drive of a computer or any other storage device. sandisk recommend LC Technologies. If they are unable to recover anything they do not charge. you only get billed if the recovery is successful. I linked their site below. 

https://datarecovery.lc-tech.com/digital-media-recovery.html