WD My Passport external HDD not recognized by my M1 MacBook Air

When I connect my external HDD to my new MacBook Air M1 it is not seen by the computer. It works perfectly fine with my old MacBook Pro mid 2012...

I use a Microsoft dongle to connect this external hdd to the new MacBook, because the hdd does not have usb-c. The dongle works just fine when I connect a usb mouse to the M1 Air.\

When I connect the external hdd it just powers the hdd (it shows the white light on the WD Passport and I hear the hard drive spinning) but the M1 Air does not see it ( nor in Finder, nor in Terminal)

Any ideas?