Another possibility that just occurred to me is: it might be a drive that requires specific software from the maker. If it's a known brand like Western Digital or Seagate, then you might want to look it up on the company website.
The other extreme is what I did: I put a standard drive in a USB case that I bought separately. Last time I formatted that I also used Linux - so that's good advice - but another option is to remove the drive from the case and temporarily install it in a PC to format. The main niggle then would be the "boot order": the PC might try to boot from that drive, and not the normal drive. In that case you'd need to make BIOS changes, or invoke a Boot Menu if you have one.