I was a Drobo user for many years until the company spiraled into bankruptcy and stopped updating its software to be compatible with the latest versions of MacOS. While I quickly transitioned my photo archive to a much better system, Drobo’s old Dashboard software left all sorts of files stranded on my computer. While the files don’t take up much disk space, occasionally MacOS would pop up a warning to tell me that, “Existing software on your system loaded a system extension signed by “Drobo, Inc.”, which will be incompatible with a future version of macOS.” How annoying!

How to Remove Old Drobo Kernel Extensions
First, I would like to emphasize that you should do this at your own risk. At a minimum, please ensure you have a Time Machine backup of your Mac to recover from any issues. I’m not responsible for what you are about to do, and you should not trust me as some “Mac expert”; I’m a photographer. That said, the method I will describe worked just fine for me.
It should be noted that the old Drobo Dashboard software had some functions to uninstall various Drobo files. Unfortunately, Drobo’s website has gone offline, and while there are hosted versions of the old Dashboard installed floating around on the internet, there’s a chance they won’t work with your current MacOS. If installing that DMG file from an un-trusted location, you also take some risks. I decided not to do it. Instead, I deleted the two KEXT files (kernel extension files) that the Drobo Dashboard installer placed on my computer. Here’s how to do that.
Drobo Dashboard installed two kernel extensions on your computer:
- TrustedDataSCSIDriver.kext
- DroboTBT.kext
You can see these by opening your Mac’s Terminal app and running the command: kextstat | grep -v com.apple
This will show you a list of kernel extensions running on your computer. If you’re receiving the Drobo legacy extension warning, you should see com.TrustedData.driver.VendorSpecificType00 and/or
com.drobo.SCSI.ThunderBolt listed in Terminal’s printed results. My (basic) understanding is that one of these was for USB-connected Drobos and one for Thunderbolt, so it’s possible you may have one or both, depending on which Drobo models you used to have.
If you want to see where these extension files are located, you can then run the Terminal command: kextfind -loaded -not -b -s com.apple to reveal the file path of the offending kext files. For me it returned the results:
- /Library/Extensions/DroboTBT.kext
- /Library/Extensions/TrustedDataSCSIDriver.kext
Navigating to my system’s /Library/Extensions folder (NOT your user/Library folder!), I could select those two kext files, ignoring a few others in the same folder that are still needed by other applications. Then, it was simply a case of right-clicking and choosing “Move To Trash.” Logged in with my admin account, and my computer asked me to give a password or use my fingerprint to authenticate the command, and that was it. Deleted. Now you can reboot your Mac to make sure everything is okay.
What if It Won’t Allow You to Delete the Files?
I had no issues deleting the files while running OSX Sonoma on a Mac Studio with one of Apple’s T2 security chips. My understanding is that in some cases, users running older versions of OSX or using a Mac that lacks a dedicated security chip may run into issues at this stage.
Since I had no issues, what I’m about to say is untested by me! I have seen a few online comments that booting your Mac into recovery mode and temporarily disabling the OS System Integrity Protection (SIP) mode, per Apple’s instructions, will allow you to delete the files. Again, I DID NOT test this myself. I did not need to do so since I could delete the Drobo extension files by simply sending them to the trash. You’re on your own from here. Good luck!
What About Other Drobo Files on Your Mac?
If you have never properly uninstalled the Drobo Dashboard software, other Drobo files may be scattered around your computer. Since they don’t currently cause me any hard or cause warning pop-ups, I’m not worrying about them. You’ll have to do some digging elsewhere if you’re looking for a list of Drobo Dashboard files and their locations. That is beyond the intended scope of this tutorial. Of course, if someone else wants to do the legwork on that and post a comment below, either with a link or the information, I’m sure people will be grateful.