Connecting a external SSD hard drive to iPad 9th gen, iOS 18.1

I’ve scoured several other articles on here where several people seem to be having similar issues as mine but the best I can tell, I’ve eliminated all of the errors but no success yet. Here’s my issue:

I have an updated iPad 9th Gen running iOS 18.1 and I am attempting to use a genuine Lightening to USB-C adapted to connect an external hard drive to my iPad. It’s a 2TB Gigastone Portable SSD rated DC +5V=0.8A. It’s using the exFAT file format. I also have the lightning cable plugged into the adapter to provide the external power and I’ve tried a few different power blocks and cords, both genuine Apple, third party, and a combination of both with no success.

For a reason I can’t figure out, whenever I plug the SSD into the adapter and attempt to access it via the Files app, it doesn’t appear under the location tab. As best as I can tell, it has a compatible format with genuine Apple firmware, and enough power being provided but still I can’t use the external SSD. any ideas to a solution?

I’m currently using a PC to format the drive as I don’t have a Mac, and the only remaining solution I’ve heard is to take the drive to an Apple Store to get them to format it in the APFS format, but I would like to avoid that so I can continue making drives myself.

Thank you!

Edit: The adapter had to be updated and didn’t while connected to the iPad but then successfully updated after being plugged into my iPhone. I couldn’t figure out how to delete the post but hopefully this helps someone.