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Thanks, James. I have a small stack of drives that are dated (every year or two) where I just take the Time Machine and "retire" it..

Are you saying that only having one backup running at a time is risky? Perhaps I should add another layer of backup. In addition to Time Machine, I could periodically (like every 4-6 months?) do a full clone onto another drive-- and rotate the clone drives. Maybe every 2-3 years, I just archive one (and take it out of rotation)? Since the clone won't be constantly running, they'd perhaps be likely to have a longer lifespan?

I don't know if that's exactly it. But I'm saying, if for example your backup drive has an issue, you're in a precarious spot where your projects only exist in ONE place and then you'd need to replace it and back up as soon as possible, but you ARE vulnerable.

I actually have one of those OWC docks that lets you pop RAW drives into them and I sometimes back up to those also. I'm just very cautious I suppose.

I rotate TM drives periodically, with one at home and one in the studio.

I also use a cloud backup service: BackBlaze.

Thanks, folks. I truly appreciate all this info.

What's weird is that I never got any error reports from Mac OS about the Time Machine drive. It was just running/working constantly-- even though it is only half-full. I tried Disk Utility First Aid from the M1 MBP, and it said it couldn't do first aid on it. So I connected it to my 2012 MBP, and it took two full days-- with lots of errors in the report. One would think Mac OS would/could report something like, "This drive is acting weird."

This is all clarifying though.

I need to consider whether to invest in some cloud backup like backblaze. Or just have an occasional drive a clone to work day (i.e., have an offsite clone that I maintain)-- and keep current projects backed up on a cloud.

Apple's iCloud prices are pretty decent, I think.