I can't decide if MacOS is being dumbed down or moving up into rarified heights of intellectualism.
The issue. I was given two large Seagate disk drives - apparently almost new since they are 6 and 8 TB respectively. Under no circumstances am I going to plug in a pair of unknown devices to my desktop, so the plan was to use my old deprecated Intel mini for the task of blanking them out. It has been a long time since I did such low level disk stuff on a Mac, but things have apparently changed. On the larger, diskutil shows three partitions - 5tb, 2tb and 1tb. An APFS, an ordinary Mac partition, and something unknown. Whatever. I will erase them all.
However... While the unknown partiton could be erased, neither of the others could. The '-' button is blanked out on both. A search for the answer gained me the helpful info from Apple that "if the '-' is blanked out, you cannot erase the partition." WTF??
So, going into terminal mode, I brought up the old reliable diskutil and started eraseDisk. Up comes "Unable to begin erase operation: This operation is restricted by Sandbox; check your settings in System Preferences." Following the suggested path, I found no reference to the issue, but did find a blurb that said in effect, "Sandbox cannot be used to repartition unidentified disks..." Again, WTF? Who is in charge of "identifying disks?" Is Apple is saying that if you need to repartition from the initial setup, sorry - go buy a new drive?"
The fix, of course, is to attach it to my Linux tower and clear it from there. Unfortunately, it is in a state of unworking until my sticks of memory are returned from OWC on a warranty issue.
Is my assumption correct that Apple has ruined an old Unix utility (that couldn't possibly be misused by a casual user - they would have no idea that it exists) or am I missing something?
Probably the latter, since I have always done low level work on a Linux machine.
Edit. Sorry. Main desktop Studio Max, with Ventura and all patches. Box being used (unsuccessfully) is Intel Mini 6 core, also Ventura and up to date.
The issue. I was given two large Seagate disk drives - apparently almost new since they are 6 and 8 TB respectively. Under no circumstances am I going to plug in a pair of unknown devices to my desktop, so the plan was to use my old deprecated Intel mini for the task of blanking them out. It has been a long time since I did such low level disk stuff on a Mac, but things have apparently changed. On the larger, diskutil shows three partitions - 5tb, 2tb and 1tb. An APFS, an ordinary Mac partition, and something unknown. Whatever. I will erase them all.
However... While the unknown partiton could be erased, neither of the others could. The '-' button is blanked out on both. A search for the answer gained me the helpful info from Apple that "if the '-' is blanked out, you cannot erase the partition." WTF??
So, going into terminal mode, I brought up the old reliable diskutil and started eraseDisk. Up comes "Unable to begin erase operation: This operation is restricted by Sandbox; check your settings in System Preferences." Following the suggested path, I found no reference to the issue, but did find a blurb that said in effect, "Sandbox cannot be used to repartition unidentified disks..." Again, WTF? Who is in charge of "identifying disks?" Is Apple is saying that if you need to repartition from the initial setup, sorry - go buy a new drive?"
The fix, of course, is to attach it to my Linux tower and clear it from there. Unfortunately, it is in a state of unworking until my sticks of memory are returned from OWC on a warranty issue.
Is my assumption correct that Apple has ruined an old Unix utility (that couldn't possibly be misused by a casual user - they would have no idea that it exists) or am I missing something?
Probably the latter, since I have always done low level work on a Linux machine.
Edit. Sorry. Main desktop Studio Max, with Ventura and all patches. Box being used (unsuccessfully) is Intel Mini 6 core, also Ventura and up to date.
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