TM tries to backup to internal drive instead of nominal external HD

This is a odd behavior since I restored to the default settings (backup every 1h instead of every 3d before). As its now not unusual that the external HD maybe offline TM tries a backup on the internal HD instead! However it never finishes but stops with a "failed backup" notice and an empty "Backups.backupdb" Folder on my internal HD.
Anyone seen this before? Thanks, Emilia

These folders are created at root level of the internal HD thus at "/".
It happened after I told the Utility "TimeMachineEditor" to restore to the default values.
I can see from the logs:
Jun 16 09:41:10 dhcp-131-XXX-XXX-101 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[460]: Backing up to: /Backups.backupdb
Jun 16 09:41:10 dhcp-131-XXX-XXX-101 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[460]: Nothing to backup.
that the backup is tried while I am on the road with Airport LAN instead of the office Ethernet cable. However I never defined a network drive or similar for TM.
thanks, emilia

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