Need to format external hard drive

[egr711]

I have a WD My Passport 0827 external hard drive and it wont show up on file explorer so i cant right click on it to format. I go to Disk Management and it isn't on the list, but it is on that panel at the bottom and it says it is "Unallocated". can u guys help?

Update:It somehow now shows up on file explorer but it shows up as Local Disk (E: ) and when i try to format it from there it says windows was unable to format. I am currently formatting in disk management lets see how it goes.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, egr711!

I'd recommend you to use the guidelines from our knowledge base and proceed to formatting your WD My Passport external drive.
However, you'd need to initialize it first through Disk Management.

How to initialize an HDD: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=DzUcV5
How to partition & format it: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=9ReqVu

Hope these help you. Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD