rsync not preserving creation time with Linux Mint Mate 21.2 anymore

[mintplaetzchen]

I'm facing the pretty weird issue that the exact same rsync script I have been using with older versions of Mint for years does not preserve the creation time on a NAS mounted via SMB share with the latest version of Linux Mint Mate (21.2). I even tried

cp -a ~/TheFile.txt /media/NAS/share/.

and TheFile.txt received the CURRENT time/date on the NAS.

HOWEVER: Using the Caja file browser or Double Commander retained the CORRECT time stamp! When I was watching the copy process taking place for a large file, the file was first created with the CURRENT date/time and the ORIGINAL file's date/time then (re?)applied after the copy process has completed.

These are my rsync parameters:

--verbose --archive --open-noatime --atimes --update --human-readable --safe-links --stats --executability --acls --xattrs

, but even the most basic setup --archive --update did not do the trick.

The NAS (working flawlessly on a PC with older Mint on it and the exact same parameters) was mounted with

/NAS/share /media/NAS/share cifs noauto,users,credentials=/home/user/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,uid=1000,gid=1000,file_mode=0770,dir_mode=0770 0 0

in /etc/fstab (NAS access credentials are in /user/.smbcredentials). There's also nothing fancy in my /etc/samba/smb.conf - with the potential exception of

[global]
   workgroup = MUNICH
   NetBIOS name = HOMEPC
   name resolve order = bcast lmhosts host wins
   client min protocol = NT1
   server min protocol = NT1

which IMHO shouldn't affect these things. These are the versions of the toolset:

rsync -V
rsync version 3.2.7 protocol version 31
Copyright (C) 1996-2022 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Web site: https://rsync.samba.org/
Capabilities:
64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
socketpairs, symlinks, symtimes, hardlinks, hardlink-specials,
hardlink-symlinks, IPv6, atimes, batchfiles, inplace, append, ACLs,
xattrs, optional secluded-args, iconv, prealloc, stop-at, no crtimes
Optimizations:
SIMD-roll, no asm-roll, openssl-crypto, no asm-MD5
Checksum list:
xxh128 xxh3 xxh64 (xxhash) md5 md4 sha1 none
Compress list:
zstd lz4 zlibx zlib none
Daemon auth list:
sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 md4

apt list rsync
rsync/jammy-updates,jammy-security,now 3.2.7-0ubuntu0.22.04.2 amd64 [installed]
rsync/jammy-updates,jammy-security 3.2.7-0ubuntu0.22.04.2 i386

Samba:
Version 4.15.13-Ubuntu

apt list samba -a
samba/jammy-updates,now 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.3 amd64 [installed]
samba/jammy-security 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.2 amd64
samba/jammy 2:4.15.5~dfsg-0ubuntu5 amd64

apt list cifs-utils
cifs-utils/jammy-updates,jammy-security,now 2:6.14-1ubuntu0.1 amd64 [installed]
cifs-utils/jammy-updates,jammy-security 2:6.14-1ubuntu0.1 i386

Perhaps someone has a clue. Many thanks in advance for any help.