Time Machine was just the most visible/frequent symptom of the problem. I saw file system corruption many other times as well, and not all of it could even be r

Time Machine was just the most visible/frequent symptom of the problem. I saw file system corruption many other times as well, and not all of it could even be repaired with macOS's built-in tools (but bizarrely, sometimes linux tools would succeed where Disk Utility failed). I remember spending an entire afternoon trying to repair a friend's iMac's root volume, and while I eventually succeeded, it took countless arcane commands only documented on StackOverflow executed in just the right sequence. I couldn't possibly replicate it. I agree, the problems with Time Machine are greater than the underlying file system. But the underlying file system was problematic enough on its own for me to never want to touch it with a ten foot pole.