APPLE RUINED DISK UTILITY AND RENDERED IT USELESS!
Earlier today I attempted to set up a new HDD in a USB 3.0 enclosure using Disk Utility on my 2011 MBP and High Sierra. The erasure and partitioning process repeatedly failed, so I switched to my 2010 MBA and Catalina where I received the -69874 error message. Something told me to try a
much older version of macOS and I rebooted the MBA into Snow Leopard to see what would happen.
Exactly as I suspected, the newer versions of Disk Utility were the cause of my difficulties. As you can see, 10.6 DU allowed me to format the drive...
...and then partition it into 4x 1TB portions.
Early Intel macOS to the rescue.
This is a ridiculous state of affairs. It's unbelievable that later versions of the operating system are unable to carry out a task as simple as formatting a hard drive and that I'm forced to use a release from 2009 as a solution. (Though it appears Yosemite is the last incarnation of macOS that isn't crippled in this manner.) Imagine if I'd abandoned Snow Leopard or just concluded that the HDD was faulty?
If anyone has suggestions as to a GUI based program that I could use with High Sierra and beyond to facilitate what was once possible with Disk Utility, please share!