Time Machine Weirdness - It might be the hard drive

Hi all - I got a weird one for you and i will describe it as best i can so we can get on the same page.

I have a 5tb western digital external usb3 hard drive I have been using for time machine backup with my 15" 2019 Macbook pro i9 (Running MacOS 12 Ventura )since I bought the machine in Mid 2023 - sometime in September 2024 it stopped making backups but didnt tell me that TM was failing until recently when it said no backups for 200 days. Disk first aid on a number of macs could not fix the drive and said i should reformat it - so i did which seemed to work however now when I go into time machine it is showing backups (on the sidebar) from September 2024 and back as well as the ones for this week. Those older entries can be scrolled over and clicked on but there is nothing there... It does nothing when clicked.

Also the hard drive itself shows 1.3tb used but there is no backups.backupdb file on the 5tb drive and no relevant files when i show invisibles - SO its backing up but still has some kind of Time Machine plaque lingering somewhere that is fouling the new backups record and since there is no backups file - this new record is suspect. Oh and i will add that to do a new backup of my internal 1tb work drive took less than an hour which is a red flag as I know ones first time machine backup will take forever and should be done over a weekend due to the volume of data...

Any thoughts or suggestions?