Cannot erase disk

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

My 1T WD external USB is not working anymore. When I connect it to my Mac it does not show up. I tried to erase but I get

An internal error has occurred. : (-69488)

How do I reformat it?

I am on OS 11.2.3

Thanks

2

Is your external drive showing up in Disk Utility? Can you share the image of the error?
I hope you have already taken the backup of your external drive since disk erase operation causes data loss.