I am puzzled as to why the USB port can't power a standard 2.5 HDD ?
Am I missing something here ?

R4 is running FriendlyWRT 21.02.3

Problem:
root@R4Router:~# ls -la /dev/sd*
brw------- 1 root root 8, 0 Sep 15 18:38 /dev/sda

When HDD is powered externally:
root@R4Router:~# ls -la /dev/sd*
brw------- 1 root root 8, 0 Sep 15 19:05 /dev/sda
brw------- 1 root root 8, 1 Sep 15 19:05 /dev/sda1

Anyone ?