Why is my 2025 iPad Air not recognizing a WD My Passport Wireless Pro?

Consider seeking assistance from Western Digital's own support resources. They may be best placed to address issues with their devices with iPadOS.

Have you installed the WD MyCloud App on your iPad? If not you should do so - as this will incorporate any device-specific drivers required to access the drive. Review the drive's User Guide for additional setup and connection guidance:

https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/wd/product/external-storage/my_passport/my_passport_wireless_pro/user-manual-my-passport-wireless-pro.pdf

If you intend to use connected USB storage, for iOS/iPadOS you will find that choosing simple hardware will facilitate easy and reliable connection. The more expensive USB and more complex storage devices are not necessarily the better choice - as these are often reliant upon a manufacturer's App that may or may not be available for iOS/iPadOS.

By way of example, a Samsung T5 SSD is fully usable with iPad - whereas Samsung's hardware encryption employed by the more expensive Samsung T7 SSD is not supported by iOS/iPadOS.

If purchasing external storage for your iPad, you would be well advised to verify that the specifications explicitly state compatibility with iPadOS. Choosing a device with dependencies upon a manufacturer-supplied App automatically limits the usable life of the product; when the App ceases to be supported/updated by the manufacturer, or is eventually withdrawn from the Apple App Store, you may lose access your stored data.

Have your iPhone and iPad been updated to the same version number? Without a better understanding of the [unsupported] WD product, it's is difficult to offer specific troubleshooting guidance.

As you are experiencing difficulty - and the product is now unsupported - you would be well advised to migrate your data to suitable storage sooner rather than later. If the data is important to you, losing access to it may be undesirable.