Missing Proxmox backups and emergency mode after minor kernel update

[Driv3r]

Hello everyone. After updating Proxmox VE 8 using apt update and apt upgrade (now I know that needed to use apt dist-upgrade
instead) from 6.8.12-12 to 6.8.12-17 and rebooting Proxmox booted into emergency mode. Also before the reboot were many log entries with message "file '/proc/mounts' too long - aborting".
From logs the problem was

Dependency failed for systemd-fsck@dev-disk-by\x2duuid-686b4c33\x2dce25\x2d46cd\x2d8d7f\x2de648b6bc5cc4.service - File System Check on /dev/disk/by-uuid/686b4c33-ce25-46cd-8d7f-e648b6bc5cc4.
Dependency failed for mnt-pve\x2dbackup.mount - /mnt/pve-backup.
Dependency failed for local-fs.target - Local File Systems.

So I commented that UUID in /etc/fstab (below is full fstab file) and everything booted fine. All VMs work except from missing backups.

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# UUID=686b4c33-ce25-46cd-8d7f-e648b6bc5cc4 /mnt/pve-backup ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2

There is a file /HDD/pve_backups.img which I suppose contains everything because there is nothing with this UUID when using lsblk or blkid. What is the correct procedure here (using proxmox-backup-client I guess). Thanks.
Contents of storage.cfg

cat /etc/pve/storage.cfg
dir: local
        path /var/lib/vz
        content iso,backup,vztmpl

zfspool: local-zfs
        pool rpool/data
        content rootdir,images
        sparse 1

zfspool: HDD
        pool HDD
        content images,rootdir
        mountpoint /HDD
        nodes pve-01

dir: backup-hdd
        path /mnt/pve-backup
        content backup