Interesting note, the drive worked perfectly with Catalina. Should I attempt to erase the whole drive, reformat and start making new backups or is there a way to address the problem between the drive and fsckhfs? If I try to renew from backup, I'm stuck because I can't force quit fsck hfs from that stage of boot yet I can't restore from backup after a full boot up. Though I can still view and move files in finder, after the force quit of fsckhfs. While it passes all tests on WD's utility app, when I try to run first aid it fails after about 4 hours. Turns out, when I force quit fsck hfs, the drive is accessible and I can access it. Meanwhile, I cleared out the old MacBook and loaded a new version of Catalina. I opened DiskUtility and there it was, greyed out with no access. I plugged in the hard drive and it just sat there steadily flashing the light. Long story short one of the programs I use regularly wasn't ready for Big Sur so I attempted to go back to Catalina. I had the old one enrolled in the beta program so of course after moving to the new one it was too. I used the hard drive to transition from the old one to the new one.
I also have 2 MacBook Airs, one mid 2013 and one less than a month old. I've got a WD My Passport 1TB SSD external drive.
