External Storage recognition/formatting

Evening mates,

I bought a 5Tb external for my Xbox One X back on Black Friday weekend, plugged it in, installed way too many games and went on about my business. Fast forward a month and I leave to go on a cruise over the Christmas holiday. My mom took the hard drive from
my Xbox thinking we could use it to store pictures and videos taken on our cameras and my GoPro. She plugs it into her laptop a few days in and we both had completely forgotten about the hard drive being formatted for use only with an Xbox One console. We
unplug it, store it deep in our bags, and went on with the trip.

Fast forward again, I'm home from the trip now and I've sat down to play some good 'ole Xbox. I plugged in the external and it says "0 out of 4.5Tb free" and says the hard drive is for pictures, media, and videos - which I obviously never put any of on there.
My Xbox recognizes it when I plug it in, I say that I want to use it for games & apps, rename it, and attempt to format it. 34 minutes go by, it's dropped from the listed storage list and I don't know what to do. I'll admit I've unplugged and reconnected it
a few times and when I unplug the hard drive, I get a notification saying that my external storage media is ready -_-. It's now 11:56pm and it's been in and "formatting" since 11:20pm. I remember I had 2.7 Tb free so I had used about 2.1Tb of my storage.
How long should this take to format? Also, why does it keep dropping from my storage list? Should I just be patient and wait it out or..?

Also, I did try to plug it into my laptop and format it but it wasn't recognized when I plugged it in during the trip, and it wasn't recognized just now when I tried again.

Appreciate all help, if any.

:)