I have an External HD that was previously used on an Xbox one and am trying to re-format it for windows usage using windows 10. The device is showing up in the device plug in, however, I cannot access it to re-format it. Any ideas?
Since you are unable to format it through Disk Management, I'd suggest you to try using Command prompt's Diskpart instead. Just make sure you run CMD as administrator in order to be able to make such changes. Here's a tutorial from MS that might shed some light on the procedure: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html
Don't mind the fact that it's for Win 7, you should be able to do it the same way in Win 10 as well.
Go to Disk Management and delete any partitions in the External Hard Drive, then format the HDD, use NFS (if your planing on using it on Windows) or Fat32 (if you will be using it on Windows and other Non-Windows OS).
still cannot access the hd, under disk drives it shows the hd, but I cannot make changes on it. Options such as format and add/delete partitions are not available
Since you are unable to format it through Disk Management, I'd suggest you to try using Command prompt's Diskpart instead. Just make sure you run CMD as administrator in order to be able to make such changes. Here's a tutorial from MS that might shed some light on the procedure: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html
Don't mind the fact that it's for Win 7, you should be able to do it the same way in Win 10 as well.