A WD hard drive can be detected by one Macbook but not another

Solution 1:

The common cause of a bus powered drive not operating is the computer isn’t getting enough power through the cable you are using to power the unit.

• USB external hard drive is mounted on one MacBook Pro but not another
• External hard drive not recognised by MacBook Pro.
• USB Hard drive has very small chance of being recognized by Macbook Pro each time it is connected, but works with other machines

Swapping cables or using a powered hub or getting a new enclosure can help triage and isolate why this happens in many cases. Also, looking for a long running fsckprocess I’m case the “good” mac is actually triggering an “unclean mount” type check. That often delays a device from mounting, but you should see it in diskutil immediately which doesn’t match your case here.