Computer Help and Support

Also if the drive is 5 years old or more it will likely malfunction soon. I'd get a new w11 compatible drive and copy everything off the old drive and be done with it.

I looked at WD's product page and they acknowledge that the drive doesn't work with w11 and (rather than fixing their insecure mess) suggest that you should turn smb v1 on.

SMB1 doesn't encrypt its network data and allows insecure access. This makes it a target for virus and malware propagation. In particular it was a target of the WannaCry virus used to encrypt and hold data for ransom. Again mostly a corporate lan issue, but people do bring malware home, or click the wrong link on some phishing web page.