Edit: I originally asked this in terms of forcing TM to do a "full" backup. After getting answers about how every backup is a "full" backup, I realized I asked the wrong question. The problem is that I have a backup that I don't trust, on a disk that has other stuff on it, including TM backups from other machines. I'd like to do another backup of one of my machines, independent from the first one. Below is the rest of my original question.
I've looked all over, and there just doesn't seem to be a way to do this. Lots of people taking guesses that seem to work in some cases, but not in mine. I've tried just deleting the folder that contains the backup, but of course the finder won't let you delete it, or even rename it. Bash won't allow it either — it always says "operation not permitted". Is there really no way just to make TM do a second, independent backup to the same disk without reformatting it?
Best Answer
Every backup is a full backup. Your destination has hard links to each file so that if you copy any snapshot to another volume or folder - you have a copy of every file. If you delete a file from one time interval - the other intervals lose no data. As implemented, there is no reason to store duplicate bits on e destination if a hard link suffices to fully document each file being backed up.