I need help with Time Machine - Won't back up properly

I'm new to Macs, my MBP is barely a month old, so bare with me.  I do understand computers pretty well and I've been trying like **** to read up and fix this on my own, but it's starting to tick me off.
Okay so I got a "WD My Passport" external HD for Xmas and my goal is to have Time Machine back everything up on it.  The problem started after a backup was halfway through and froze.  I thought wiping the Passport clean and starting over would do the trick, but it was tricky figuring out how to erase "Backup In Progess Files"
I read up on the "Disk Utility" stuff and partioned the Passport, which set it back to normal it seemed like.  So I tried the backup one more time, but again it froze a little less than half way through.
So now "Disk Utility" won't even let me erase the Passport or Partition it - it tries for about 10 minutes and eventually says it can't "unmount".  Yet when I enter Time Machine it shows that some files have been backed up in "Star Wars Mode", but it seems like that's only saved to the MBP itself?
Please correct me if I'm wrong with my logic, and any help is much appreciated.  I'll provide further input if it helps too, just let me know.

Sounds like a bad Passport may be the culprit. If Disk Utility can't erase or properly mount the drive, it may have serious problems.
I've used Passports for Time Machine with great success, but I've also had to replace 2 of them as they eventually went bad. Try another external hard drive and I'll bet it works.

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