OK, the second beta of OS 11.3 was released yesterday:
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/17/apple-seeds-macos-big-sur-11-3-beta-2/In actuality, there is nothing, at least "on the surface", that helps me with V11.3. But what I am anticipating is help with these issues, previously pointed out by joemikeb:
"I have no experience with Big Sur on Intel Macs and there are definite differences, but from posts I have seen on other product support, web sites macOS 11.2 apparently broke some things associated with external boot drives that were working in 11.1. It appears the problem revolves around changes in the utility used to bless a boot drive. I have also seen reports similar to yours about the version of Disk Utility used to erase a volume. In both cases, early results indicate both issues are fixed in the current macOS 11.3 beta. Given macOS 11 is the biggest rework of Apple's OS since Mac OS X, you may have made the switch one update too soon."
That helpful post came about when I had issues with the latest release of Tech Tool Pro and V11.2 of Big Sur.
