SD card not showing up on Mac

I am trying to use my external HDD, but it is not showing up in finder or desktop. The device showed up yesterday, but after formatting the HDD, it has disappeared.

Here are what I’ve done:

My first step is to restart the computer. I restart the computer and still nothing. I have tried both USB ports as well as a different USB cable. Today, I opened up disk utility, but I didn’t see the disk. This article indicated that if I can’t see my external disk in Disk Utility, the disk may be physically damaged. I have to send the disk to a local repair center and that would be costly. Is this my only choice?

I am currently running macOS 10.14 and the external drive is a Western Digital (don’t know the product number, it was given to me by a friend.)

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.