Time Machine Always backing Up

Might want to exclude the VB disk images from your default Time Machine backup. They tend to be comparatively huge, and very volatile.

I’d look to temporarily disable and remove Ease US Data Recovery, and disable OneDrive, disable Dropbox, and disable and remove CCleaner, as a test.

Get rid of both VPNs.

There’s a bunch of stuff left dangling and incompletely removed too, including part of one of the VPN client add-ons and the add-on backup app, and part of VB.

Download and run EtreCheck, and share the report to the clipboard. Then open a new reply here, press the Additional Text button that looks like a printed page to get a text input box big enough to paste the hardware and software configuration report here, and paste and post that report here.

FenderTele wrote:

Thank you. Most of that stuff is left over remnants from my old MBP.

Then I’d back up, then create a second back up, erase and install the newest macOS supported in this Mac (macOS 13 Ventura), and migrate files and documents and not apps using Setup Assistant during the install or Migration Assistant* after the install. This “nuke and pave” will get rid of a whole lot of accreted apps, while keeping the files you need, and re-installing current versions of the apps you do need.

*If you want to migrate after the macOS install using Migration Assistant, pick your initial login name at install as not the one you want to use long-term. Pick something else, some other name, like “Spare Admin” or some other login name, and leave your preferred login name available for the subsequent migration. If you insist on picking the name you want to use as the first user created by setup, you won’t be able to easily re-use it later.

lf you deleted CCleaner and others by just deleting the application you've not remove all of the supporting files it leaves behind. You can check to see if you've removed all of the supporting files by downloading and running the shareware app Find Any File to search for any files with the application's or the developer's name in the file name.  For CCcleaner software you'd do the following search(es): 

1 - Name contains ccleaner

Do the same for the other apps to be removed

Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop or Trash bin in the Dock for deletion.

FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.  

If you get warnings that the file can't be deleted because it is in use or used by another app boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and delete from there.

Note:  if you have a wireless keyboard with rechargeable batteries connect it with its charging cable before booting into Safe Mode.  This makes it act as a wired keyboard as will assure a successful boot into Safe Mode.

FenderTele wrote:

Fast isn't always best, right? I did avoid that lengthy process when I upgraded to a new MB. Looks like it's time to pay the piper.

Back up and then do another fresh back up? Maybe to a different hard drive?

I prefer to have a couple of backups around if I’m intentionally going to do something…. destructive… to my data. Nuke-and-pave. Re-partitioning of any sort. Big upgrades. I’ve had storage devices and tape drives fail at… inopportune… moments. Have had folks wipe the wrong device at the wrong moment, too.

Here, I’m here recommending a data-hazardous sequence to somebody that’s potentially not all that experienced (no offense intended), and those backups increase the chances that they can preserve and recover their data.

I’m not big on YOLO with other peoples’ data.

Time Machine happily allows multiple Time Machine archives whether locally or to network-attached storage (NAS) with TM support, so running parallel Time Machine backups is one way to get some backup redundancy.

Not sure I understand this. Where can I read and learn more about this?

*If you want to migrate after the macOS install using Migration Assistant, pick your initial login name at install as not the one you want to use long-term. Pick something else, some other name, like “Spare Admin” or some other login name, and leave your preferred login name available for the subsequent migration. If you insist on picking the name you want to use as the first user created by setup, you won’t be able to easily re-use it later.

It’s common for folks to have one login username that they really want to use for their main login.

Let’s hypothetically call your preferred login name FenderTele. That’s the login name you want to use.

When you install macOS, you necessarily create a login. It’s the first, and it’s an admin user.

If you happen to use FenderTele as the name for that first-created login, creating a second new user and switching to that login FenderTel and migrating content from your backups gets gnarly. Because you can’t have two FenderTele logins.

If you want to create a login and look around first as is common, and only then migrate your contents, then create that first login as NotFenderTele or FenderTeleSpare, and leave the name FenderTele available for your second-created and “real” login. The one you will migrate your content into.

Having a “backup” admin account is handy to have around anyway, on the off chance that the main admin account somehow gets corrupted. Whether that backup admin login is the first or second or thirty-seventh login created matters not.

But trying to use or re-use an already-used login name? That gets gnarly.

Above is based on those folks around here that Get Unhappy when they can’t easily have the login name they really want for their migrated content login. (It is possible to rename a login shortname, but the steps involved must be followed exactly. Easier to avoid that.)

FenderTele wrote:

Thank you Old Toad.

What gets me is the Apple computers and devices work so well and for so long, why in the world would their system be set up in a such a way that when you delete an application, remnants remain?

Yep…

Apps distributed via the app store, and apps directly distributed via app bundles, are self-contained.

Via the app store, sandboxed, too.

Packages, such as those used by add-on “security” apps and such, can become entrenched.

Folks get in trouble with add-on cleaners, add-on security tools, and related.

Recent macOS versions make it far harder to modify macOS itself, which both makes malware authors work harder, and also greatly annoys those Mac users that demand to store their own files in, for instance, the root directory, or some other protected location, and requires the third-party app developers to either hew somewhat closer to a clean install or require system integrity protection to be disabled.

Nuke and pave: Erase and reinstall macOS - Apple Support

FenderTele wrote:

Thank you Old Toad.

What gets me is the Apple computers and devices work so well and for so long, why in the world would their system be set up in a such a way that when you delete an application, remnants remain?

FWIW, that has been the norm for many, many years.

FWIW, you "log out" of Dropbox by quitting from the Dropbox menu bar icon.