'is there something am I missing?' Does the WD drive have a 'hidden, proprietary partition', perhaps with some specialized WD software on it? Software intended for security, disk management, etc.? Sometimes 'pre-packaged' drives come this way out-of-the-box.

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The presence of such a partition could prevent Disk Utility from properly re-initializing the drive. I personally have bought one USB flashdrive like this (Sandisk drive some years ago). It came with a proprietary partition that could not be removed on the Mac (at that time). I actually had to take it back to where I bought it (Circuit City, remember them?), and have a tech there remove the software using a Windows computer. After that was done, I then could re-initialize the drive to HFS+. Yes, I did, I also tried formatting using Terminal, to no avail, but as I explained the only way to do it was a 2007 mac mini.

Could it be Hardware related? I'm running High Sierra 10.13.1 Beta (17B35a).

Today to have peace of mind I tried an Intel 160GB ssd which I bought very cheap a few weeks ago and I had the same trouble as with the 8tb drive, went to the same friend and yes his old mini formatted the ssd first go, about one minute. I'm going to install an old os x version on the ssd, boot my iMac and see if it can format the drives normally. Yes, I did, I also tried formatting using Terminal, to no avail, but as I explained the only way to do it was a 2007 mac mini. Could it be Hardware related? I'm running High Sierra 10.13.1 Beta (17B35a). Today to have peace of mind I tried an Intel 160GB ssd which I bought very cheap a few weeks ago and I had the same trouble as with the 8tb drive, went to the same friend and yes his old mini formatted the ssd first go, about one minute.

I'm going to install an old os x version on the ssd, boot my iMac and see if it can format the drives normally. I had many problems with Disk utility on High Sierra, formatting is one of them.

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I found out, that most drives I needed to format I can - eventually. Step 1 is generally eject the drive.

Disk utility in HS seems to fail more than succeed in unmounting the drive on their own. Step 2 - once the drive is ejected, select the greyed out drive in Disk tools and partition or 'erase' as you want.

Usually, on third or fourth attempt the formatting succeeds and drive is generally OK. Apple file systems are easier to create than others - few days ago I spent 15 minutes creating exFAT from HFS drive. Kind of nightmare, Sierra Disk utility were quite reliable, why did they have to screw up old functionality is not clear to me. I am also having an absolute nightmare with this all day. I bought a new WD 4TB external and tried several hours trying to get it to reformat. It fails every time. Now when I try to mount it, I get 'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.'