USB HD no longer available in Time Machine

I have had a USB HD attached to my Airport Extreme, in use as a backup disk for Time Machine.  This has worked fine for over a year, but I recently noticed that backups were no longer being completed due a full disk.  When I look in Time Machine and "Select Disk," the USB drive no longer appears in "Available Disks" list.  I plugged the disk into my MBP and completed a backup directly, so the disk works fine.  I looked in the Airport Utility and the disk appears under the "Disks" tab.  Why would it no longer be available for Time Machine use?  Has something changed regarding support for this type of setup? 
Thank you.

Apple has never fully committed support of the Time Machine/Airport Extreme combination.  I have a Airport Extreme 6th gen that supposedly supports the Time Machine, (page 13 of the installation manual).  After a year of experience I have concluded that it does not work - period.  If you have any critical data on your system(s) I would recommend that you use a dedicated backup/recovery product like Carbon Copy Cloner.

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