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)

Since you are new to Apple computers never, never install and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac.

They are not needed and can adversely affect system and application performance.

As they say in the old western movies: happy computing to you. (bad joke my bad 😉)

Have you tried plugging that drive into one of the 3 ports on the back of your Mac mini 4?

The 2 ports on the front are not as advanced as the 3 ports on the rear.

Being new to Macs, I recommend you don't buy online, but instead visit your local Best Buy store, as they know what products work on your Mac vs PC.

Amen to Old Toad's advice. I went 5 years on my iPad and just now replaced my old MacBook Pro with a new Mac mini M4. I saw lots of recommendations for CleanMyMac, so I got it. BIG, BIG, mistake!! It wrecked my file system. Luckily I had a bootable USB, so I spent yesterday erasing the drive and starting fresh with macOS Tahoe 26.2.

The fresh install of Tahoe 26.2 looks and works better than the upgrade from Sequoia. I may do fresh installs with every major MacOS upgrade, from now on.

Old Toad wrote:

Since you are new to Apple computers never, never install and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac.

They are not needed and can adversely affect system and application performance.

As they say in the old western movies: happy computing to you. (bad joke my bad 😉)

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/6fa7c308-a9b2-491a-8a73-2536489ce105

If you're thinking of getting another drive I strongly recommend OWC (MacSales.com). They are considered by most experienced users here to be the premiere hardware supplier for Macs.