Formatting external HD

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I just bought a 500GB Western Digital HD and when I try to erase, format, or partition it all the buttons are unclickable. I want to erase it and make it FAT32. Why is this so difficult?
 

bobtomay

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Your Mac's Specs
15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
You have not given us a clue as to how the drive is connected to your Mac, nor what you are doing.

In Disk Utility, if you want to erase and format a drive, then you need to have the drive highlighted in the sidebar - not the existing partition. You can then use either the Erase tab if you only want a single partition - the Partition tab if you want to create multiple partitions.
 

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