Mac Mini 4 not recognizing Western Digital Easy Store

It may be that the software shipped with the WD drive is not Mac compatible but made for a Windows PC.

Generally speaking, Mac users are discouraged from using any software that is shipped with an external drive. These apps are often buggy and problematic. It is best to use Disk Utility to erase and reformat the external drive and then use the appropriate Mac app (Time Machine) to backup the computer or use a quality third-party app such as Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich or SuperDuper! from Shirt-Pocket to manage the backup tasks.

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

D.I. Johnson wrote:

Follow the guidance in the Apple Support links I posted and use Disk Utility to reformat that external drive. Use the GUID partition scheme and the APFS format. You can name the drive whatever you like.

Note that it will be important in Disk Utility to select View > Show All Devices before you can properly format that drive.

FYI, here is the older version of the Apple article from the Internet Archive for erasing the whole physical drive which also includes a picture of Disk Utility highlighting everything. I think it may be easier for users to understand than the current version of the article...might just be me though ;-)

https://web.archive.org/web/20250909095655/https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/erase-and-reformat-a-storage-device-dskutl14079/mac

You're welcome.

And you got this. 👍🏽

For the time being, don't worry about going to find those backup utilities. Apple has provided all you need.

Start with the tools that are built into your Mac.

Follow the guidance in the Apple Support links I posted and use Disk Utility to reformat that external drive. Use the GUID partition scheme and the APFS format. You can name the drive whatever you like.

Note that it will be important in Disk Utility to select View > Show All Devices before you can properly format that drive.

Once formatted, the drive's icon should appear on the Desktop and you should be able to use the drive immediately.

That's a good link to reference. 👍🏽

I meant to use this link to Apple's current support page though with Sequoia selected as the OS version:

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility - Apple Support

(https://support.apple.com/en-lamr/guide/disk-utility/dskutl14079/22.6/mac/15.0)