reformatting an external hard drive off of time machine

I formatted my external hard drive for time machine and now I want it back to a normal plug and play hard drive for regular storage.

I have a western digital elite 500g.

When you say you want it back for normal plug and play, what do you intend to use the drive for? As it stands now, the drive is formatted to HFS+ and as long as you use it with your Mac there's no reason to change anything.

If you would like to use the drive for both a Mac and a PC then you would need to change the format on the drive to FAT-32.

Regards.