Why does Time Machine not backup /Applications/Utilities in Ventura

rbpeirce wrote:

My rescue plan has become increasingly complicated because my TM backups keep failing.

Maybe that should be your question.

I now have two small TM partitions on different drives I can use as long as they last.

That sounds like the source of your problem. I never want to hear anything like "small TM partitions". Your Time Machine drive should be a dedicated drive. It should be 2-3 times the size of all the data you are backing up. If you are really short on space or you have lots of data, you might be able to get away with a Time Machine drive that is only twice as big as all the storage that you have been backing up.

If you try to go any smaller, you will get regular failures. That's not a big deal. You can just erase the Time Machine volume and start over fresh. But the smaller the Time Machine drive, the more frequently you will have to do that. If your Time Machine drive is 3 times the size of the drives you are backing up, you can expect problem free operation for years.

rbpeirce wrote:

I have a 500Gb drive in my M1. I think it is SSD. I'm actually using less than 250Gb and a 1Tb Time Machine drive is enough to hold almost four months of backups.

All modern Macs have SSDs now. A 1 TB backup drive for a 500 GB internal is fine.

I was using 1Tb on two separate drives for a total of 2Tb, hence the 8X estimate.

I don't know what you are saying. Were you backing up two different 1 TB drives? Were you using two different 1 TB drives as backup drives? Were you trying to combine them into a single 2 TB Time Machine backup drive?

While a 2 TB drive would be an ideal size for a 500 GB hard drive, 1 TB is fine. You can use multiple backup drives with Time Machine. It will alternate between all connected backup drives. That way, you can regularly unplug one or the other and take it offsite.

My external drives are not SSD. They are 5Tb Seagate Portable Drives.

Are these backup drives? Or are they for something else? I thought they were 1 TB drives. Are you trying to backup these external 5 TB drives to the 2 x 1 TB Time Machine backup drives?

I'm sorry, but if you are having problems, you have to be specific about what you are actually doing.

I've read APFS does not work well on spinning drives but I've had no problems outside of TM.

Again, if you want to discuss any specific problems with Time Machine, then please do so.

If a hard partition is no longer considered separate what is it considered to be?

A mistake.

I'm getting mixed messages. Some people agree with me and some don't so I don't have a definitive answer.

Agree with what? I can't get you to say anything.

My conclusion is, if I have something seriously wrong, it is either the M1 or the post Mojave OS or the way they work together.

There are other possibilities.