External Time Machine drive removal

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External Time Machine drive removal

I am trying to remove an external time machine hard drive connected to my Apple Airport Extreme using AirPort Utility version 6.3.9 on an M1 Mac OS26 and I don't see the option to do so. There are no Erase Disk or Archive Disk options when I open the Disks tab in the AirPort Utility. I'm trying to be ready for OS27 which will not support the current protocol being used to communicate with my AirPort Extreme. Any suggestion will greatly be appreciated.

AirPort Extreme

Posted on Feb 3, 2026 1:44 PM

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Answer 1

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Bob Timmons

Level 10

185,462 points

Feb 3, 2026 2:41 PM in response to zbigk

Not what you want to hear, but Apple essentially dropped support for Time Machine to a Time Capsule or a hard drive connected to an AirPort Extreme when Tahoe was introduced.

Tahoe did allow a user who had already been using Time Machine to continue to do so, but any new Time Machine setups were not allowed.

There are no Erase Disk or Archive Disk options when I open the Disks tab in the AirPort Utility.

As far as I remember, there never were with an AirPort Extreme.

Erase Disk and/or Archive Disk in AirPort Utility were used with the Time Capsule, which had a built in SATA hard drive, different than a USB drive connected to an AirPort Extreme.

You should be able to erase the drive that was connected to the AirPort Extreme by connecting it via USB directly to a Mac and then using Disk Utility on the Mac to format / erase the drive.

If you are going to be using that hard drive......connected directly to your Mac......with Time Machine, you would want to format the drive in APFS.

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